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THE 

NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

ORATIONS 



THE 

NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 
ORATIONS 



ADDRESSES SERMONS AND POEMS DELIVERED BEFORE 

THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK 

1820-1885 



COLLECTED AND EDITED BY 

CEPHAS BRAINERD 

AND 

EVELINE WARNER BRAINERD 



PUBLISHED FOR THE SOCIETY 

VOLUME I 

^W# ■ ■ 

NEW YORK 

JLhc Century Co. 

MCMI 



I'h'F ! '"RRAKY OF 

I OC^•G^£SS, 
I Two Cof-.es ReceivEB 

OEC. n 1901 

COPVBIOHT ENTRY 

CLASS ^/ XXd No. 

I 9QPV a i 



Copyright, 1901, by 

The New England Society in 

THE City of New York 






The DeVinne Press 



NOTE 



THERE is a "natural piety" in the sentiment that 
moved a New Englander of the New Englanders, 
the senior editor of this collection, to preserve the Society 
addresses of his own day, and to seek with a scholar's in- 
stinct, and with loyalty to the region that bred him, for 
those printed in the earlier years of our time-honored 
league. The New England Society in the City of New 
York can point to no better estate, transmitted to it from 
the pagt century, than this of which the administration 
has devolved upon Mr. Cephas Brainerd and his daugh- 
ter. To Miss Brainerd's zeal and ability these volumes 
owe their editorial supervision. Introduction, and bio- 
graphical and other Notes preceding the respective ad- 
dresses. Father and daughter alike are to be envied for 
their conjunction in a labor congenial to both; and the 
Society well may felicitate itself upon the result which 
now crowns the work. 

The collection is in truth one that our members need 
not hesitate to set forth. The record and influence of 
the Society's annual celebrations are of no slight import ; 
again and again these festivals have been among the 
memorable events of historic years. At present, when 
cyclopedias of oratory compete for favor, it is easy to 
overestimate the relative value of speeches on current 
themes, — 

"To give to dust that is a little gilt 
More laud than gilt o'er-dusted." 



vi NOTE 

Through the dust o£ the past the true metal of the New 
England addresses warrants their preservation in authen- 
tic and dignified form. The granitic conviction of the 
early utterances now recalled was the basis upon which 
grew, from decade to decade, a hospitable structure, 
touched with beauty, warm with patriotism, inscribed 
with ancestral tradition but steadfastly open to increase 
of light. 

Taken together, 'The New England Society Orations," 
of the years embraced in this their first collection, form 
of themselves a class of forensic literature which no book- 
lover, especially if he be a member of the Society that it 
honors and illustrates, may not with satisfaction place 
upon his shelves. 

Edmund C. Stedman. 

By Direction of the Board of Officers. 



INTRODUCTION 

npHE annual celebrations on Forefathers' Day of the 
^ New England Society have always, save on a 
few special occasions, included a dinner, followed by 
speeches and the singing or recitation of original 
verses. Until 1820 there is little report of what took 
place at any except the first three of these yearly meet- 
ings. In 1 819, however, the following preamble and 
resolution were put on record : 

"Whereas his Excellency, the Governor of the State 
of New York, having recommended that the 226. day 
of December instant be celebrated by the people of 
this State as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and 
said day being the anniversary of this Society, 

"Resolved that the celebration of the Society on that 
day be omitted." 

The custom of preceding the dinner by a public ora- 
tion seems then already established, for when the ser- 
mon of Dr. Spring was published, the Society asked 
Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Zechariah Lewis, the editor of 
the Commercial Advertiser, for their addresses also. 
No copies of these latter have been found, nor has 
most diligent search unearthed any trace of two later 



viii INTRODUCTION 

discourses recorded as published by the Society — that 
of Bishop Wainwright in 1823, and that of Henry R. 
Storrs in 1834. Mr. Fessenden refused to give for 
publication his address of 1826. With these excep- 
tions, the present collection of formal addresses, as 
noted in the Society's reports, is complete. Though 
some of the poems delivered before the Society were 
published, few have been preserved. Two of the ear- 
liest exist — the song written by Thomas Green Fessen- 
den in 1805 for the first festival, and that written by 
Joseph Warren Brackett for the exercises of 1807. 
Grenville Mellen, Rev. Mr. Flint, Mr. Stone, then 
editor of the Commercial Advertiser, and Mr. P. 
Hawes contributed verses for several celebrations, but 
there remain of these only Mr. Mellen's grave ode and 
Mr. Hawes's rollicking jingle to the tune of "Yankee 
Doodle." The ode by William Cullen Bryant and the 
verses by Dr. Pierpont are here printed with the ora- 
tions of the same dates. 

It was voted inexpedient to have an oration in 1859, 
and this long series of worthy celebrations closed with 
the speaker of two years before. Dr. Storrs. In 1870, 
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the landing 
of the Pilgrims, the custom was revived and an address 
given by Ralph Waldo Emerson. At the unveiling in 
Central Park of Ward's statue of "The Puritan," the 
gift of the Society to the city, George William Curtis 
pronounced the oration. 

With allowance for the personal element in each of 
these addresses, there may yet to some extent be traced 



INTRODUCTION ix 

in them the development of national thought and ex- 
perience. The earliest deal primarily with the reli- 
gious aspect and influence of the Plymouth settlement. 
Later, notably in the paper by Dr. Bacon, the careful 
historical temper predominates. But the pressure of 
the hour more and more turned the speakers' thoughts 
from the deeds of the seventeenth century to the doings 
of their own time, to the contrasts between these two 
and the dangers lurking in change. 

A mention of a menacing growth of ritualism and 
an allusion to a prevalent fear of the influence of 
Rome mark the time of two addresses. Mr. Webster's 
reiterated statement of confidence that all danger of 
dissolution of the Union had passed discloses the pe- 
riod of his utterances. One whisper of disquiet, how- 
ever, sounds nearly throughout the entire series. Save 
in the fiery lines of the enthusiast. Dr. Pierpont, this 
is ever reserved, inclining now to the one, now to the 
other side of the question. But the thought of slavery 
could not be banished from addresses which were 
necessarily, whatever the taste or training of the indi- 
vidual speaker, national in character. The warnings 
against unrestricted emigration and the spoils system 
show that the lapse of fifty years has made surpris- 
ingly little change in some problems. 

The estimate of the Pilgrims, varying in details, 
comes close to the position given them in later judg- 
ment. Their share in the founding of the nation, their 
intellectual and spiritual leadership, the force of their 
religious and political convictions, potent after many 



X INTRODUCTION 

of their tenets have passed from men's beHef — on 
these points the speakers, themselves of differing creeds 
and differing environments, and all men holding by 
their worth commanding positions, spoke as one. 

Appreciation of their courtesy is heartily accorded 
to the publishers of Mr. Choate's v/orks, Messrs. Little, 
Brown & Co. ; of Dr. Bushnell's, Messrs. Charles 
Scribner's Sons; of Dr. Holmes's and Mr. Emerson's, 
Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. ; and of Mr. Curtis's, 
Messrs. Harper and Brothers. The greater part of the 
addresses, however, have appeared only in the pam- 
phlets issued by the Society, and peculiarities in spell- 
ing, use of capitals, and punctuation found therein 
have been generally retained as characteristic of period 

or writer. 

E. W. B. 

New York, 
November, 1901. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

WooLSEY Rogers Hopkins i 

Beginnings of the New England Society of New York, 1S84 

Gardiner Spring, D.D 9 

A Tribute to New England, 1820 

Remarks on the Charges made by the Rev. Gardiner Spring, 
D.D., against the Religion and Morals of the People of Bos- 
ton and its Vicinity, 1821 . . . . . . . aq 

John Broderick Romeyn y^ 

The Duty and Reward of Honouring God, 1821 

Philip Melancthon Whelpley loi 

"The Memory of the Just is Blessed," 1822 

Samuel L. Knapp 141 

Address, 1829 

Leonard Bacon 165 

Address, 1838 

Robert C. Winthrop 211 

Address, 1839 

Charles Brickett Hadduck 261 

The Elements of National Greatness, 1841 

George B. Cheever 287 

The Elements of National Greatness, 1842 

RuFus Choate 321 

The Age of the Pilgrims the Heroic Period of our History, 1843 

Daniel Webster 354 

The Landing at Plymouth, 1843 

George Perkins Marsh 371 

Address, 1844 

Charles Wentworth Upham 417 

The Spirit of the Day and its Lessons, 1846 



BEGINNINGS OF THE NEW ENGLAND 
SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 

WOOLSEY ROGERS HOPKINS 



BEGINNINGS OF THE NEW 

ENGLAND SOCIETY 

OF NEW YORK 



{From the Magazine of A nierican History /or January, 1S84, 
by permission of the publisher. ] 



AS New England Societies are now a power in the 
Xl, land, it may entertain the readers of the Magazine 
of American History to learn something of the origi- 
nal organization of the first one of its kind in America 
— the New England Society of New York. 

In 1805, when the metropolis was a much smaller 
and a very different city from the New York of to-day, 
James Watson, the first president of the New England 
Society, then a gentleman of leisure, culture, and hos- 
pitality, resided in a handsome old-time mansion in the 
shady and gently curved street bordering the Battery 
Park. He was much respected in his little world, was 
the intimate friend of General Samuel B. Webb, and of 
Trumbull, the famous artist, and many other persons 
of eminence. He died, however, in early middle life, 
and might have passed from the memory of man — as 
he left no kin — but for a beautiful portrait painted by 
his friend Trumbull, which hangs before me as I write 
these lines. We find him represented in the picture as 
a man of some forty well-rounded years, with a florid 
complexion, high forehead fringed by soft hair gath- 
ered back in a queue, beautiful eyes, a pleasing expres- 



4 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

sion of countenance, and stylishly dressed in the coat of 
the period, with large old-fashioned rufBes escaping 
from the vest. At No. 7 State Street, in the mansion 
adjoining that of James Watson, resided Moses Rog- 
ers, of Connecticut birth and parentage, a merchant 
of the great firm of Woolsey & Rogers. His wife was 
Sarah Woolsey, sister of the wife of President Dwight 
of Yale College. At 68 Stone Street resided William 
Walton Woolsey (a brother of Mrs. Rogers), whose 
wife was a sister of President Dwight, and grand- 
daughter of President Edwards. These gentlemen, to- 
gether with Samuel M. Hopkins and several others, 
had been talking about establishing a New England 
Society, and had finally agreed to meet informally on 
a certain evening and give the project shape and per- 
manent direction. On the morning of the day ap- 
pointed, the occupants of the State Street houses, look- 
ing under the tall trees, saw a schooner luff up and 
flap her sails while a boat was lowered. A tall, fine- 
looking clerical gentleman stepped in, and a moment 
later the yawl grated on the beach, and the passenger, 
bag in one hand and a very baggy umbrella in the 
other, landed on the hard sand. Majestically he moved 
up the slight ascent, taking off his capacious cocked 
hat under the shade of perhaps the same oak that 
stretched its arms over the heads of Henry Hudson 
and his crew nearly two centuries before, and after 
standing a moment to enjoy the view, turned and 
crossed the velvety green square, directing his steps to 
the home of Moses Rogers. He was greeted by the lady 
of the mansion with "Welcome, Dr. Dwight; you are 
better than you promised!" He replied, "Yes; I had 
a quick passage, favored by wind and tide, and thus 
made the trip from New Haven in two days." His 
hostess inquired for "her sister and the children," and 



HISTORICAL SKETCH 5 

congratulated him on being in time to attend the ex- 
pected gathering in the evening, which had for its ob- 
ject, she explained, the formation of a new society, to 
be called the "New England Society." 

President Dwight was much pleased, and advanced 
many useful suggestions concerning the proposed or- 
ganization. The subject came up again and again dur- 
ing the day, as friends and relatives dropped in to greet 
the distinguished visitor. The meeting, when evening 
came, was held in James Watson's parlor. No. 6 State 
Street; a dozen or more earnest, thoughtful men gath- 
ered about the bright, sparkling wood fire. Samuel M. 
Hopkins, the first secretary of the Society, came from 
the upper part of Pearl Street, bringing a tin lantern 
in his hand. If we had seen him on his way we should 
have noted that he moved irresolutely, questioning 
whether he should pass the lower point of the Swamp, 
and up Fulton Street, so as to avoid high tide and wet 
feet at Cedar and Pine streets, or go through Chatham 
Street by the Tea Water Pump. He chose the latter 
route, and had a hard time struggling through the mire 
of the unpaved road, but reached Broadway finally, 
and, calling for Col. Trumbull, arrived in State Street 
at the hour named. Among others present were Gen- 
eral Ebenezer Stevens, Samuel A. Lawrence, President 
Dwight, Moses Rogers, William Walton Woolsey, Oli- 
ver Wolcott, Francis Bayard Winthrop, then residing 
in Wall Street, and D. G. Hubbard. After some pre- 
liminary conversation, Nathaniel Prime was called to 
the chair and William Leffingwell appointed secretary. 
But little was accomplished on the occasion, except the 
formation of a committee to draft the constitution, a 
general discussion as to the principles which the docu- 
ment should embody, and an arrangement for a public 
meeting at the City Hotel on May 6, to consummate 



6 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

the contemplated organization. In turning over the 
time-browned leaves of the precious original records, 
carefully preserved during the three fourths of a cen- 
tury since they were written (in a clear, beautiful 
hand ) , we read as follows : 

"We whose names are herewith subscribed, con- 
vinced that it is the duty of all men to promote the 
happiness and welfare of each other, witnessing the ad- 
vantages which have arisen from the voluntary asso- 
ciations of individuals, allied to each other by a simi- 
larity of habits and education, and being desirous of 
diffusing and extending the like benefits, do hereby asso- 
ciate ourselves under the name of the 'New England 
Society of the City and State of New York.' 

"The objects of this Society are friendship, charity, 
and mutual assistance; and to promote these purposes 
we have formed and do assent to the following arti- 
cles," and then follows : Article ist, defining the titles 
and duties of the officers; Article 2d, stating that as 
soon as seventy persons, natives of New England and 
residing in the city of New York, shall have subscribed, 
they shall meet and elect officers ; Article gth, affirming 
that each member shall be a New England man by 
birth, or the son of a member; Article loth, defining 
that, by a vote of two thirds, persons not having these 
qualifications may be admitted; Article nth, explain- 
ing that by a two-thirds vote, given viva voce and en- 
tered on the minutes, a member may be suspended. No 
fear of responsibility, it seems. The present masked 
method of admitting and suspending by black balls was 
not known to these honorable gentlemen. Article 12th, 
states that this Society shall have no power to impose 
secrecy. 

A brief extract from the minutes will inform the 
reader concerning the first public meeting : 



HISTORICAL SKETCH 7 

"At a general meeting of the New England Society, 
held at the City Hotel on the 6th of May, 1805, Wm. 
Henderson was named chairman and Benj. M. Mum- 
ford secretary. The articles of association being read 
by the secretary, and it appearing to this meeting that 
the same had been subscribed by more than seventy per- 
sons, natives of the New England States, it was 

''Resolved, To proceed to the election of officers ac- 
cording to the said articles; viz., president, two vice- 
presidents, four counsellors, and eight assistants; all 
upon one ticket ; and on counting the ballots the follow- 
ing gentlemen appeared to have been elected. 

"President — James Watson; Vice-Presidents — Ebe- 
nezer Stevens and Francis Bayard Winthrop ; Board of 
Counsellors, Rufus King, Saml. Osgood, Abijah Ham- 
mond, Oliver Wolcott. 

"Assistants — Moses Rogers, Wm. Lovett, Wm. 
Henderson, Wm. Leffingwell, Saml. Mansfield, Elisha 
Coit, John P. Mumford, and Gurdon S. Mumford." 
On the same day the board of officers met at the house 
of Gen. Ebenezer Stevens, and chose Jonathan Burrall 
treasurer, and Samuel M. Hopkins and Benj. M. Mum- 
ford secretaries. Henceforward the meetings were held 
at different places. 

On May 17th, at Ross's Hotel, Broad Street, and 
on Dec. 6th, following, it was resolved "that Col. 
Trumbull be requested to form a certificate to be fur- 
nished to the members in testimony of their belonging 
to the Society." The first dinner was given Dec. 21, 
1805, and the toasts were, "The City of Leyden," 
"John Carver," "John Winthrop," and "The Memory 
of Washington." The first volunteer toast was by 
Gen, Stevens, "Our President, James Watson, a man 
who is the delight of his friends and an honor to the 
Society over which he presides." A song was com- 



8 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

posed for this occasion l)y Thomas Green Fessenden. 
At this and succeeding anniversary dinners, when the 
"Clergy of New England" was given as a toast, the 
music was invariably "Old Hundred.'' Other songs 
on various occasions were "Plail Columbia," "Yankee 
Doodle," "Roslyn Castle." and "Anacreon in Heaven." 
For some years the meetings were held at the Tontine 
Coffee House, at Barden's Long Room, Broad Street, 
and at Benjamin Butler's in Wall Street, but about 
1 812 the Society settled at Niblo's Bank Coffee House. 
The charming old house where the first meeting was 
held is still standing. But architectural reformers en- 
tered it not very long since and now little remains of 
its original antiquarian elegance. 



A TRIBUTE TO NEW ENGLAND 

GARDINER SPRING, D.D. 

1820 



GARDINER SPRING 
(1785-1873-) 



Although he was a native of Newburyport, Massachusetts and 
u ;« tViP last century, the 1 f e and work of Dr. Uarainer 
S°;^„ b* ng 'o N'^York, and almost .o this gene.a.,o. 

U was he first of several of the anniversary speeches to occa 

when robbed of the dignity of its hour. 



SERMON 



Psalm cvii. 7. 

And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go 
to a city of habitation. 

I REJOICE, my friends, that, after so many memori- 
als of the event we now celebrate, the time has ar- 
rived, when the Sons of the Pilgrims in this City, deem 
it a privilege publicly and in the house of prayer, to 
honour the only wise God, in their rehearsal of scenes, 
which so often drew tears from the eyes and praises 
from the lips of their pious progenitors. Two hundred 
years ago this day, our forefathers landed on the shores 
of this Western World. We cannot but feel, that this 
event deserves a grateful acknowledgment and com- 
memoration. The ancient people of God, scattered 
as they had been in different portions of the globe, 
enslaved by one enemy after another, oppressed by 
difficulty and danger from every side, found no sweeter 
theme for their praise, than that eternal mercy to which 
they owed all their hopes, and that incessant guar- 
dianship which had so often interposed in miracles of 
mercy and judgment, to guide them to "a city of 
habitation." Their danger and their deliverance are 
exquisitely set forth by the Psalmist in the touching 
imagery of travellers lost in a pathless desert, wan- 
dering about this great wilderness world as "pilgrims 



12 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

and strangers on the earth," but at last directed and 
conducted home. The way in which they are led is 
often dark and mysterious; but in the issue there is 
every thing to advance the praises of their gmde and 

deliverer. . . . 

Nor can we at once advert to a series of events 
more illustrative of these sentiments, than the course 
in which a wise Providence conducted our ancestors^ 
The first settlers of New-England were descended 
from a highly respectable class of men, who took their 
rise in England, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and 
were called Puritans.^ After the year 1662 when 
the famous Act of Uniformity was passed by the Eng- 
lish Parliament, requiring a solemn declaration of as- 
sent to every thing contained in the book of Common 
Prayer and the administration of the Sacraments, 
thev were called Non-Conformists, and since that pe- 
riod they have been more commonly called Dissenters 
Europe was not without the expectation of a partial 
reform as early as the fourteenth century. Not far 
from this period, the authority and influence of the 
Roman Pontiffs began to decline; and m the fifteenth 
century, some attempts at reformation were, to say 
the least, the ostensible objects of two important Coun- 
cils of the Latin Church.^ No serious advance was 
made in this cause, until the shameless profligacy of 

remarks, "If a man maintained ''''^^^^ >''^^^fi ,f Constance 
his steady adherence to he ^he Co«n«* ^^ 

i^'^'^'r, Dnrt^lrSe kept the }t,ismuZ\n ilu; and after 

Synod of Dort ; it he Kepr uic ^.f. , ^g^j-s and six 

Sabbath and frequented ser- sitting three yea 

mons ; if he maintained family "^^J^^^'^he great design of this 

TvJS V?t drTnf norr C^tci7^waf to put an end to 



GARDINER SPRING 13 

the Popes, and the martyrdom of several distinguished 
witnesses ^ for the truth, together with the firmness 
and increase of the Lollards in England, and the Huss- 
ites on the Continent of Europe, had prepared the 
way for Martin Luther to enter upon a work, which 
was destined not only to suppress the preposterous 
pretensions of Papacy, but to give an effectual and 
salutary influence to the Church of God for centuries 
to come. This memorable reformation was estab- 
lished in the sixteenth century. The principles of the 
Reformed Church, as adopted by Luther, were exten- 
sively received in different parts of Germany; found 
very powerful abettors in Switzerland, Geneva, France, 
and Sweden; and were introduced into England to- 
wards the close of the reign of Henry VIII, and dur- 
ing that of his successor, Edward VI. With the ex- 
ception of the Eucharist, there was a happy agreement 
in the Reformed Churches on all the leading points 
of Christian theology; and with the exception of the 
Church of England, there was also a very general con- 
currence in the essential principles of Church govern- 
ment. A lingering attachment to the rites and cere- 
monies of the Latin Church, in several of the Monarchs 
and Bishops who took a leading part in the Reforma- 
tion, and especially in Elizabeth, in whose reign the 

the schism which arose in the one of its professed objects, it 

fourteenth century in conse- met with very little encourage- 

quence of a collision of sen- nient. 

timent with regard to a sue- ^ John Huss and Jerome, of 

cessor to Gregory XI. A ref- Prague in Bohemia, were con- 

ormation of the Church, how- demned and burnt alive by the 

ever, was one of the professed Council of Constance. The 

objects of this Council, though same Council also condemned 

it was altogether defeated. the opinions of IVickliffe, who 

The Council of Basil was has well been styled "the 

convened in 1431. under the morning star of the Reforma- 

Pontificate of Eugenius IV. tion," and passed sentence that 

This Council sat twelve years; his bones should be dug up and 

and though a reformation was burnt with his writings. 



14 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

Reformation was matured, operated as one of the 
causes in giving the Church of England its peculiar 
form of government. Among those, who manifested 
no small degree of zeal for the entire renunciation of 
the Popish ritual, and who earnestly contended for a 
purer reformation, both in discipline and ceremonies, 
were the Pilgrims of New-England. Neither Eliza- 
beth nor James manifested any predilection for the 
views of the Puritans; but, on the other hand, became 
the advocates of a severe and rigorous uniformity, 
which obliged multitudes to resist the claims of the 
Establishment with a perseverance and decision of no 
bright augury either to their religious or civil tran- 
quillity. Under the fairest and most sacred pretence, 
an effort was made, combining the power of Church 
and State, to impose and enforce restrictions upon the 
conscience, which well nigh proved the rock that sev- 
ered the peace of England. Elizabeth was at heart 
averse to a pure reformation, and the enemy of the 
non-conformists; and James, though early inclined to 
favour their cause, and though no prince was ever 
more able so to favour it as to preserve the peace of 
the realm, was just pusillanimous and proud enough 
to become the mere creature of Prelacy, and from the 
professed advocate of religious liberty, to avow himself 
its implacable foe. 

Toward the latter part of James's reign, it became 
obvious that the Puritans could not remain with safety 
in England; and a little company from one of the 
Northern Counties, composed principally of the Church 
under the pastoral care of the Rev. Richard Clifton, 
and his successor the Rev. John Robinson, contem- 
plated a removal to Holland, which was effected in 
the year 1607. After residing some time at Amster- 
dam, they removed to Leyden, where the kindness 



GARDINER SPRING 15 

and hospitality of the generous Hollanders was con- 
spicuous, and will ever be cherished in grateful remem- 
brance. But notwithstanding the security and peace 
which this retirement afforded them from the bitter- 
ness of persecution, their condition in Holland was not 
without difficulties of a very serious kind. The labour 
of becoming familiar with a strange language — the 
hardships necessary to a bare subsistence — the expo- 
sure of the rising generation to the dissipation, im- 
moralities, and profligacy of a populous city — together 
with the faint prospect of perpetuating a Church which 
they believed to be constituted upon the model of apos- 
tolical simplicity,^ led them to direct their thoughts 
toward the New World. 

It could not but be foreseen that their removal to 
America would be accompanied with the severest dan- 
ger and deepest self-denial. They were about to spread 
their sails on a boisterous ocean, and under inclement 
skies to direct their course to an inhospitable clime. 
After much consultation, and several seasons of special 
prayer for the divine direction and blessing upon their 
enterprise, they left Holland for England in July, 1620, 
and having made suitable preparations for the voyage, 

' The Puritans appear to ing their own officers, which 

have maintained a sort of are of three sorts, Pastors, or 

Church government which was Teaching Elders, Ruling El- 

not strictly Presbyterian or ders. and Deacons — 

Congregational : but which re- "That these officers, being 

tained some of the principles chosen and ordained, have no 

of both. They believed, lordly, arbitrary, or imposing 

"That every particular Church power, but can only rule and 

of Christ is only to consist of minister with the consent of 
such as appear to believe in , the brethren." Prince's Chro- 

and obey him — nology, vol. i. p. 92. 

"That they have a right to Prince, in his New-England 

embody themselves into a Chronology, complains of the 

Church by contract or cove- charge that Mr. Robinson and 

nant — his followers were Brownists. 

"That being thus embodied, Vide vol. i. p. 81. 
they have the right of choos- 



1 6 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

embarked for America on the 5th of August, of the 
same year, the whole number of adventurers being 
about one hundred and twenty.^ After having been 
obHged, by the badness of the weather and the un- 
soundness of one of their ships, to return twice into 
port, they at length survived a tedious passage of suf- 
fering and hazard ; reached the harbour of Cape Cod 
on the nth of November; about the middle of De- 
cember arrived opposite the town of Plymouth, and 
on the 22d of the same month, landed on the memor- 
able rock so famed in the history of the Pilgrims of 
New-England. 

Their condition on landing was such as to call for 
the peculiar benignity of a superintending Providence. 
Without the limits of their patent ^ — enfeebled and 
sickly through the length and hardships of their voy- 
age — without shelter and without friends — before 
them a wide region of solitude and savageness — they 
were compelled to pitch their tents between the bowl- 
ings of the forest and the storm of the ocean, and 
spend a dreary season in burying their dead, and think- 
ing of their homes. Like the Pilgrims of other times, 
"they wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; 
they found no city to dwell in." Notwithstanding the 
rigour of the climate, and the severities of a disease 
which had cut off nearly one half of the colony, very 
conspicuous were the divine guardianship and munifi- 

* The Rev. Mr. Robinson a settlement on Hudson River, 
never himself removed to or in the adjacent country. For 
New-England. It was his in- this they had obtained a pat- 
tention to follow his congrega- ent: but they were carried be- 
tion; but he died March i, yond the precincts of the ter- 
1625, in the fiftieth year of his ritory which had been granted 
age, and at the summit of his to them, and were prevented 
usefulness. His widow and from altering their course by 
children afterwards removed the inclemency of the season, 
to Plymouth. Robertson's History of Amer- 

* Their design was to make ica. 



GARDINER SPRING 17 

cence toward these pious men.^ Not only was their 
arrival be3'-ond the limits of their charter a favourable 
disappointment, but large numbers of the natives had 
been swept off by a pestilence which raged the preced- 
ing year; so that it was not only less difficult to repel 
their invasions, but more easy to obtain the means of 
a comfortable subsistence, and to form such alliances 
as proved salutary to the colony for many years to 
come.^ 

Such was the prosperity of the Plymouth colony, 
that large bodies of pious people in England began to 
make preparations for settlements among their breth- 
ren in the West. Not only were the causes of their 
dissatisfaction by no means removed at home, but ad- 
ditional considerations began now to influence the Eng- 
lish government to increase the facilities of removing 
abroad. In the year 1628, a patent was granted to a 
company of knights, covering a large portion of Mas- 

^ "A combination of circum- tip sooner than usual ; and 
stances, singularly providential, early in the season, they en- 
is observable in the settlement tered into a perpetual league 
and preservation of these pious of friendship, commerce, and 
pilgrims in New-England. On mutual defence with the In- 
Hudson's River and its vicin- dians." Trumbull's General 
ity, the Indians were numer- History of the United States, 
ous, and had they not been vol. i. 

disappointed with respect to ^ The first Governor of Ply- 
their original design, probably mouth colony, was Mr. John 
they would have fallen a prey Carver. He was among the emi- 
to savage cruelty. In New- grants to Leyden, who corn- 
England, Providence had pre- posed Mr. Robinson's Church 
pared the way for their settle- in that place. He was unani- 
ment. The uncommon mortality mously elected to this office by 
in 1617, had in a manner de- the colony, after their arrival 
populated that part of the in Plymouth harbour, and be- 
country in which they began fore they went on shore. He 
their plantation. They found died on the 5th of April fol- 
fields which had been planted, lowing, greatly lamented by 
without owners, and a fine the infant colony. Prince's 
country round them, in some Chronolog. Hist, of N ezv-Eng- 
measure cultivated, without an land. 
inhabitant. The winter broke 



1 8 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

sachusetts, which resulted in establishments at Salem, 
Charlestown, Boston, Dorchester, Watertown, and 
Roxbury. In March, 1631. a plan was set on foot 
for establishing a colony on Connecticut River; and 
in the prosecution of this design, several families re- 
moved from Dorchester, Cambridge, and Watertown, 
and commenced settlements at Windsor, Hartford, 
and Weathersfield. In November, 1635, Mr. John 
Winthrop, agent for Lords Say, Seal, and Brook, to 
whom the Connecticut patent had been granted in 
1 63 1, arrived at the mouth of the river, built a fort, 
and commenced an establishment at Saybrook; in 
April, 1638, a company from England commenced an 
establishment at New-Haven ; and in the same year, a 
branch of the Plymouth colony began a settlement in 
Providence, Rhode-Island.^ Thus in less than twenty 
years from the first arrival at Plymouth, were the 
New-England colonies established, and in the enjoy- 
ment of a regular and prosperous government, and 
amid all the anticipations of a flourishing empire. In 
this short period, a world that had been little else than 
the resort of beasts of prey, was turned into fruitful 
fields and pleasant habitations; and a forest that had 
swarmed with savage men became peopled with the 
sons of the Most High. 

Such is the way in which the God of our fathers 
led forth the Pilgrims of New-England. "We have 
heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us 
what work thou didst in times of old ; how thou didst 
drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst 
them; how thou didst afflict the people and cast them 
out." As the difficulties which obstructed the course 
of our ancestors, seemed to demand no common inter- 

* Vide Trumbull's History of Connecticut, and Trumbull's 
History of the United States. 



GARDINER SPRING 19 

positions of favour; so did the God of nations seem 
to "give his angels charge over them to keep them 
in all their ways." When difficulties and darkness 
perplexed them, he "sent out his light and his truth 
that they might lead them :" When they were hemmed 
in by enemies, he opened a passage for them through 
the sea : When they "wandered in the wilderness where 
there was no water," he "brought water out of the 
rock," and rained down manna for them out of hea- 
ven. "He found them in a desert land, in a waste 
howling wilderness; he led them about; he instructed 
them; he kept them as the apple of his eye. As an 
eagle stirreth up her nest — fluttereth over her young 
— spreadeth abroad her wings — taketh them — beareth 
them on her wings; so the Lord alone did lead them, 
and there was no strange god with them." 

A sensible writer on the uses of history, remarks, 
that "History tends to strengthen the sentiments of 
virtue, by the variety of views in which it exhibits 
the conduct of Divine Providence, and points out the 
hand of God in the affairs of men." I do not see 
how any man can deny the agency of the Supreme, 
in upholding and directing all things, who considers 
the supremacy he exercises "in increasing the nations 
and enlarging them; in enlarging the nations and 
straitening them again." How obvious to the most 
superficial observer, that the whole course of our ven- 
erable forefathers was the result of the divine pur- 
pose, lay under the divine inspection, and was directed 
by a divine and omnipotent hand. There was no 
slumber to his eye, no intermission to his agency and 
care. There was nothing fortuitous in any one occur- 
rence connected with this humble, yet magnificent en- 
terprise. Events, which a superficial observer would 
have been tempted to pronounce unimportant and acci- 



20 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

dental, flowed from design, and in the issue were seen 
to be invested with real importance. 

But what we design to bring into view in this part 
of our subject, is, that this enterprise was under the 
guidance of a Providence not only particular and con- 
stant, but singularly wise. The settlement of New- 
England was designed to have a very important influ- 
ence on the character, prospects, and usefulness of the 
American nation. I speak not of that hardihood and 
enterprise, which distinguishes the physical character 
of New-England, and which is felt in different parts 
of the land to the present period ; but of the operation 
of those moral causes which have acted so powerfully, 
not only on their own immediate descendants, but on 
this risen and extended empire. You will allow me, 
then, 

In the first place, to call your attention to the influ- 
ence of this event on religious liberty. It was not 
until lately, that even in Protestant countries, the spirit 
of intolerance in matters of religion was deemed no 
constituent part either of good government or vital 
godliness. When we consider what human nature is, 
and what the world has seen, we may well suppose, 
that this was not a lesson to be learned at once. From 
the age of Saul of Tarsus down to the oppressions of 
Archbishop Laud, the visible Church has contained 
within her own bosom men. who under the specious 
pretext of zeal for the truth, have disregarded and 
trampled under foot the most sacred and important 
rights of man. The Reformation did much to weaken 
prejudices, which were founded in ignorance and su- 
perstition, and to advance and establish the principles 
of religious liberty; but the rights of man, as a moral 
being — as a creature bound by the laws of Jesus Christ, 
were not in a good degree understood, until the catas- 



GARDINER SPRING 21 

trophe of the scene, which was exhibited in the days 
of James and Charles, and which issued in the expul- 
sion of the Pilgrims of New-England. The contest 
of the Puritans was one into which they were drawn 
with reluctance, and was a contest for principle. It 
was not so much their opposition to ecclesiastical estab- 
lishments, or their inveteracy toward the Church of 
England, but their love of "pure and undefiled reli- 
gion," and their purpose to enjoy it, that constrained 
them to leave their native shores. To adopt the lan- 
guage of what may with no impropriety be called their 
own manifesto, — "That the inspired Scriptures con- 
tain the true religion — that nothing is to be accounted 
the Protestant religion, respecting either faith or wor- 
ship, but what is taught in them — that every man has 
the right of judging for himself, of trying doctrines 
by them, and of worshipping according to his appre- 
hension of the meaning of them" ^ — these were the 
sentiments, which inspired them with so much self- 
denial and intrepidity; and which, notwithstanding 
their comparative weakness, they resolved, under God, 
should never be renounced. 

In those countries where the principles of religious 
toleration have acquired their maturity, the constitu- 
tion and laws smile with equal favour and protection 
on all sects and denominations. If the law of the 
land lay me under no restriction, as to the doctrines I 
shall believe and the duties I shall practise; if in the 
form of my worship they leave me to the dictates of 
my own conscience, and to my present and eternal 
responsibilities; I surely enjoy all the religious liberty, 
which an honest man can desire. I will not ask that 
my opinions should escape the ordeal of severe dis- 
cussion, or that my conduct should be exempt from 
^ Prince's New-England Chronology, p. 91. 



22 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

scrutiny and censure, where it deviates from the hne 
of rectitude; I will not plead for that "magnanimous 
liberality" which exults in indifference to all opinions, 
and which is satisfied only with contempt of the truth : 
nor will I complain of the vigilance and fidelity with 
which the constituted authorities of the Church throw 
the shield of her maternal discipline around "the faith 
once delivered to the saints." And if, on the other 
hand, I may be allowed a candid examination of the 
sentiments of others; if I may disapprove and censure 
what in my judgment demands censure and disappro- 
bation: and if, in the enjoyment of these rights, no 
sect or persuasion can claim any preeminence, except 
what it derives from the validity and excellence of its 
principles, what is this but religious liberty? We are 
not insensible that there are those who "complain that 
they have no religious liberty, unless they have liberty 
to have no religion at all." It is somewhat amusing 
to see what impatience of contradiction, and what a 
morbid sensibility some men discover to every thing 
that looks like a discussion of their favourite creed; 
and if we, my friends, have not become the abettors of 
this bigoted liberality, we owe much to the decision 
of our forefathers. With honest exultation, be it said, 
there is no spot on the globe where the rights of con- 
science are more sacredly revered than in New-Eng- 
land. There every man thinks for himself on sub- 
jects of the greatest moment. The spirit of discussion 
and inquiry is encouraged to an extent almost without 
a parallel; and if the Church had been as watchful 
in the exercise of a vigorous discipline on the one 
hand, as the State has been in guarding the rights of 
private judgment on the other, the benefits of this 
spirit would have been extended with fewer of its 
evils. I am well aware that liberty of conscience is 



GARDINER SPRING 23 

one of those things which is easily abused; but when 
I consider the mischiefs, which an intolerant spirit 
has spread through the earth, the groans with which 
it has filled all Europe, and the rivers of blood it has 
shed, I feel grateful to a good Providence that I am a 
descendant of the Pilgrims. I ask no man to relinquish 
his opinions because they differ from mine, unless I 
can show him that they differ from the Bible. What 
I give, I claim; and what I claim, is the privilege of 
all. Painful as it was, the struggle of our fathers was 
not in vain. It will not soon be forgotten in Britain, 
that the Dissenting interest once had the ascendancy 
over the Establishment,^ and that when royal oppres- 
sion and ecclesiastical violence combined to bring in 
arbitrary power, both the Prince and the Prelate were 
brought to the block. That the American States have 
not been so slow to learn, is in no small degree owing 
to the high sense which our fathers cherished of the 
rights of conscience. It is now an unquestioned 
axiom, that religious freedom is the sacred and in- 
violable right of every man. It is no longer disputed 
that a man may worship God according to the dic- 
tates of his own conscience, and be notwithstanding 
entitled to the protection of the laws, and to all the 
immunities of a citizen. And what Christian, what pa- 
triot, but will rejoice that this most important prin- 
ciple has been so highly esteemed and so jealously 
guarded by the American people, that it holds a promi- 
nent place, not only in the several State Constitutions, 
but in the great bond of our National Confederation? 
Ever since the establishment of the Plymouth colony, 

^ The writer does not mean cendancy. In the latter part 

to say, the Dissenting interest of the reign of Charles I, and 

was ever formally established until the restoration of Charles 

by the English government; II, it actually exercised a pre- 

but that it had the popular as- dominant influence. 



24 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

the Western World has in this respect been unfolding 
a splendid and consoling prospect. At no period for 
these last two hundred years, has the afflicted Church 
from any quarter of the globe looked in vain for a 
secure retreat, or the daughter of Zion been denied an 
inviolable asylum. 

There is a second point of view in which the coloni- 
zation of New-England may be considered very im- 
portant; and that is, the influence of this event on 
American literature. Piety may be fraught with the 
most benevolent desires, and in retired spheres of ac- 
tion may mature and carry into effect the most benefi- 
cent designs; but piety without learning, in a more 
extended province, accomplishes little, either for the 
honour of God, or the benefit of mankind. "Through 
wisdom an house is builded, and by understanding it 
is established." Lock up the treasures of knowledge 
from the great mass of the community, and you doom 
them to a condition of intellectual meanness and pov- 
erty, at no great remove from "the horse and the 
mule which have no understanding." Few have more 
sacredly felt the importance of the general diffusion 
of learning and science, than our forefathers. A very 
respectable writer of our own country has remarked, 
"that it might be expected the colonists of New-Eng- 
land would be most early and zealous in their attention 
to literature. Their character both for learning and 
piety, and the circumstances attending their establish- 
ment, were a sufificient pledge of their disposition to 
promote the interests of knowledge, which they well 
knew to be one of the most important pillars of the 
Church as well as the State." ^ It is no partial or 
extravagant representation to say, that they were men 
of vigorous talent, enlarged views, and uncommon 
* Miller's Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century. 



GARDINER SPRING 



25 



learning.^ America has not seen a more manly and 
gigantic race than that which took possession of this 
western wilderness during the first century after the 
landing at Plymouth. There are not wanting at the 
present day, illustrious specimens of their native acute- 
ness and patient research, which would reflect honour 
on any age, and which will long preserve the American 
name from oblivion. In vain will New-England now 
look for a Cotton, Hooker, Davenport, Mather, May- 
hew, Norton, Oaks, Prince, Cutler, and Dickinson.^ 
Nor were her worthies confined to any one class of 



^ There is a very interest- 
ing fact related by Prince, in 
his New-England Chronology, 
which redounds much to the 
honour of the Rev. Mr. Robin- 
son, the patriarch of the Ply- 
mouth colony. Soon after the 
Curators of the University of 
Leyden had invited Simon 
Episcopius, a professed Ar- 
minian. to the divinity chair in 
that institution, an event deep- 
ly deplored by the Churches, 
and especially by Polyander, 
the Calvinistic professor, Epis- 
copius published several Ar- 
minian Theses, which he en- 
gaged to defend against all op- 
posers. Mr. Robinson, being 
earnestly requested by Polyan- 
der and the divines of the city 
to accept the challenge, con- 
sented to enter the lists with 
Episcopius, and completely 
foiled him, not merely once, 
but a second or third time, in 
the presence of a numerous 
and learned assembly. Prince's 
New-England Chronology, p. 
38. 

* The Rev. John Cotton came 
to this country in 1633, and 
was settled in Boston as col- 
league with the Rev. Mr. Wil- 



son, the first minister in that 
place. While in England, he 
was chosen head lecturer in 
Emmanuel College ; and be- 
came subsequently an instruc- 
tor of young men designed for 
the ministry, some of whom 
were from Germany and Hol- 
land. He was a distinguished 
critic in the Greek and Latin 
languages, and conversed with 
some facility in the Hebrew. 

The Rev. Thomas Hooker 
came to New-England in com- 
pany with Mr. Cotton. He 
was first settled at Cambridge, 
and afterwards at Hartford. 
A very competent judge once 
.said of him, that "he never 
met with Mr. Hooker's equal, 
either in preaching or disputa- 
tion." 

The Rev. John Davenport 
was the first minister of New- 
Haven, and one of the found- 
ers of that colony. He was an 
universal scholar, and held the 
first rank as a preacher. The 
late Dr. Dwight used to re- 
mark, that Mr. Davenport did 
more than any other man to 
form the character of Connect- 
icut. Such was the reputation 
of the abovementioned three 



26 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 



men. The names of Winthrop, Eaton, Hopkins, Wol- 
cott, and Prince, among her laity, will long be remem- 
bered as the enlightened and distinguished patrons 



gentlemen, that they received 
a pressing invitation to go over 
to England and assist in the 
deliberations of the Assembly 
of Divines at Westminster. 

Dr. Increase Mather was a 
native of New-England, and a 
graduate of Harvard College, 
of which he received the Presi- 
dency in 1685. 

Dr. Cotton Mather was a 
native of Boston, and one of 
its first and best ministers. He 
was a man of vast learning, 
and his industry was even pro- 
verbial. It is said of him, 
"that no person in America 
had so large a library, or had 
read so many books, or re- 
tained so much of what he 
read." He was familiar with 
the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, 
French, Spanish, and Iroquois 
languages. 

There were four Mayhews, 
men of eminence and useful- 
ness, — Thomas, John, Experi- 
ence, and Jonathan, — all line- 
ally descended from Governor 
Mayhew, of Martha's Vine- 
yard ; of whom the first three, 
together with their ancestor, 
were distinguished for zeal to 
promote the Gospel among the 
Indians. 

The Rev. John Norton came 
over to this country in com- 
pany with Governor Winslow, 
in 1635. He was early settled 
at Boston, and afterwards at 
Ipswich, and afterwards again 
established at Boston. After 
the restoration of Charles II, 
Mr. Norton was one of the 
agents of Massachusetts ap- 
pointed to go over to England 
to obtain the confirmation of 



their charter. He was an emi- 
nent scholar and divine. One 
of his friends used frequently 
to walk from Ipswich to Bos- 
ton, a distance of thirty miles, 
to attend the Thursday Lec- 
ture, and would say, "that it 
was worth a great journey to 
unite in one of Mr. Norton's 
prayers." 

The Rev. Urian Oaks was a 
native of England, but was 
educated at Harvard College, 
and became the President of 
that institution in 1680. He 
excelled equally as a scholar, 
as a divine, and as a Christian. 
By his contemporaries, he was 
considered as one of the most 
resplendent lights that ever 
shone in this part of the world. 

The Rev. Thomas Prince 
was the son of Thomas Prince, 
the Governor of Plymouth col- 
ony. He was colleague with 
Dr. Sewall in the Old South 
Church in Boston. In the 
opinion of Dr. Chauncy, no 
man in New-England had 
more learning, except Cotton 
Mather. 

The Rev. Timothy Cutler, 
D. D. was a native of Charles- 
town, Massachusetts, and was 
inducted to the Presidency of 
Yale College in 1719. He was 
particularly distinguished for 
his acquaintance with oriental 
literature. 

The Rev. Jonathan Dickin- 
son was a native of Connecti- 
cut, and first President of 
New-Jersey College. He was 
a man of learning, of distin- 
guished talents, and much cele- 
brated as a preacher. 



GARDINER SPRING 



2^ 



of American literature.^ Such were the men who 
made those exemplary and benevolent efforts for the 
foundation and maintenance of those literary institu- 
tions, which have exerted so commanding an influence 
on the American character, which are felt to the re- 
mote limits of the Union, and which have given this 
youthful Republic a superiority and elevation above 
many of the older nations of the earth. 

Anxiously attentive to the general diffusion of sci- 
ence, our forefathers laid the basis of their exertions 
in the extended establishment of common schools. It 
was as much a point of conscience with them, and it 
entered as really into all their plans of colonization, to 
furnish their posterity with the means of intellectual 
advancement, as to provide them with the means of 
daily and comfortable subsistence.^ Nor may it be 



'The Hon. John Winthrop 
was one of the company which 
arrived at Salem in 1630. He 
was the first Governor of Mas- 
sachusetts. 

The Hon. Theophilus Eaton 
accompanied Mr. E)avenport to 
New-England in 1637, and was 
the first Governor of New- 
Haven colony. 

The Hon. Edward Hopkins 
was also in the same company 
with Mr. Davenport. He was 
one of the Governors of Con- 
necticut, a benefactor of Har- 
vard College, and the founder 
of a grammar school both at 
New-Haven and Hartford. 

The Hon. Roger Wolcott, a 
native of Windsor, and Gov- 
ernor of Connecticut. 

The Hon. Thomas Prince 
was a native of England, and 
arrived at Plymouth in 1621. 
He was chosen Governor of 
the colony in 1634. He was 
not only distinguished as a 
man of great worth and piety, 



but as the advocate and patron 
of learning. He was the firm 
supporter of a learned and 
regular ministry, in opposition 
to lay preachers. By his de- 
cision in procuring revenues 
for the support of grammar 
schools, he rendered himself 
obnoxious to the clamours of 
the populace; but was entitled 
to the praise of being the 
founder of public schools. 
Vide Mather's Magnolia, and 
Allen's Biographical Diction- 
ary. 

^ In 1641, the Massachusetts 
colony enacted, that "If any 
do not teach their children and 
apprentices so much learning 
as may enable them to read 
perfectly the English language, 
they shall forfeit twenty shil- 
lings." Not long afterwards, a 
law was made, that when any 
town increased to the number 
of one hundred families, they 
should set up a grammar 
school, the master thereof be- 



2^ NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

denied, that in consequence of the high estimation in 
which they held this plan of instruction, common 
schools have been set upon a more respectable footing, 
and cherished with a more paternal regard, in New- 
England, than in any other portion of the globe, if 
we except perhaps Scotland. Beside their attention 
to common schools, our ancestors also laid the foun- 
dation of those higher seminaries of learning which 
have been justly considered among the brightest orna- 
ments of the land.^ "Accordingly, during the greater 
part of the seventeenth century, the literature of the 
American colonies was in a great measure confined to 
New-England." For a series of years, New-England 
had the almost exclusive incumbency of the various 
seats of American learning; and even now, with some 
very honourable exceptions,^ she furnishes the largest 
part of the teachers of our schools, the preceptors of 
our academies, and the Presidents and Professors of 
our Colleges and Universities. It is no enviable task 
to institute a comparison between this and other sec- 
tions of our country, but I believe it will be found 
upon examination that New-England has had her full 
share of authors in moral, physical, and political sci- 
ence, and those too of no disreputable character. 

The style of education is a subject to which our an- 
cestors paid early and particular attention. That New- 

ing able to instruct youth, so Island College, which received 

far as that they may be fitted its charter in 1764; Dartmouth 

for the University. Miller's College, incorporated in 1769; 

Retrospect. Williams College, incorporated 

^The different Colleges of in 1793; Bowden College, in- 

Nevv-England are: — Harvard stituted in I794; Middlebury 

College, or the University of College, founded in 1800; and 

Cambridge — this is the oldest the University of Vermont, 
institution of the kind in 'The College of New-Jersey, 

North America, and was founded in 1746, enrols among 

founded in 1638; Yale College. her alumni some of the most 

first established in 1700, and distinguished men of our coun- 

incorporated in 1701 ; Rhode- try. 



GARDINER SPRING 29 

England has generally excelled the Southern and Mid- 
dle States in the study of Oriental Literature, and in 
mathematical and metaphysical science, is to be attrib- 
uted to the high estimation in which the first colonists 
held the severer studies, and the consequent influence 
of this predilection upon her literary institutions. In 
the estimation of our forefathers, religion excepted, 
nothing countervailed the weight, and dignity, and 
usefulness of a solid education. "Wisdom and know- 
ledge, and strength of salvation, were the stability 
of their times." Nor have the grand pillars which 
then supported the fair fabric of public and individual 
welfare, though they have been subject to some decay, 
lost their original strength and beauty. The benign 
influence of learning has been widely diffused; and 
if some of it has become vitiated, and much of it super- 
ficial, it is no longer confined to the higher orders of 
men, but pervades ver}'- considerable portions of the 
community. Our infancy as a nation, our habits as 
a large commercial people, sedulously intent on gain 
rather than the pursuits of learning and science, to- 
gether with the want of leisure and patronage, have 
operated as serious discouragements to men of letters; 
but notwithstanding these, the field of literature is 
still extending, while there is no diminution of that 
ardent and inquisitive spirit which prompts to inde- 
fatigable, and patient, and bold excursions. Thanks 
to the God of our ancestors, that we are not dragging 
out our existence in the dark regions of sottishness 
and barbarism. Let any man compare the Chaldeans. 
Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, with their ignorant 
and barbarous cotemporaries ; let him look at Europe 
since the revival of letters in the fifteenth and six- 
teenth centuries, and compare it with the ignorance 
of the tenth and eleventh centuries ; let him survey the 



?r XZVs- EXGLAXD SOCIZT^' ORATIONS 

r'?'?rr.: ? ' ' ".arv. enc the United 

?- -- - ' ---— ~"??:a- and 

- - -lence of 



discnrer the t. f 

r^^'^tie ?T^^■Kieaoe m ibe esr:T >e" : Xew- 

' T!? in trie ' 'te this erent 

- -' c- — :i5. oDerstioa on 

Timtte?! suKse 

. .:s^ as 
- to the 



ica. ' imo It- as 



It casTrcn 1* 



-ess 


■of 


•5ie 


^reat 


re- 






^t^e 










c •'*^ 

»= 










•r' 








IS 


of 


■>*. 










M-"-' 






. _ ' 


-'< 






GARDINER SPRING 



31 



' f propitiation was shed, and this vast c 

prising a large part of the earth, re-- 

disturbed possession of the "god cf t' :. 

the "dark places of the earth v. 

tions of cruelty. '"'" It was a bk ;- 

sembling the "region of the sha - r 

millions were groping "without God and wit; 

in the world." ^ It was the gre - 

isnL My friends, "the things v 

rifice, they sacrifice to devils, ar. i - : :j God." On 

the spot where you and I have 

the divine merdes, and beheld ; 

glory, the "dwellers in this wilderness" once made 

their children to pass through the " " ' ' " . 

How long the prince of darkness v. 

^ Tke leading tribes of In- 
dians that inhabited New-Eng- 
land at this time. were. 



a rer; 

pie. V, ;_ . .. .: _ _.._::.:._ : . :.: 
Connecticnt. Old Indians re- 
late that in iorzr.zr t'— t? thr;- 
could raise fo"- ■ -- - 

fit for war. 

2. The Xarraxin^iis. ii±ib- 
iting Xarragansit Baj. Ther 
were a great people, and once 
able to arm more than nre 
•housand men. 

3. The Pawknnnawkntts. Irr- 
y~:S to the East and Xorth- 
.-^st of the Xarragansits. and 
f:3ttered over the Plymouth 
colony. They originally con- 
sisted of abotit three thousand 
armed men. btrt were swept off 
in great ntmibers by a pesti- 
lence which prerailed in 1612 
and 1613. 

4. The Massachusetts, inhab- 
iting aboTTt Massachusetts Bay. 
This tribe was abont as large 
as the Pawkmmawkntts. and 



shared the 
eoidemic '' 

": The ' 
-hi Xor::' 

he Mas 
Large a tr^'. 
destrorec 



fate fr::_. . 



mere w^- 

. _ ^.— the :■: : 

le Car_ada Indians, the 



rp1--t 



was .; 



reiiffion 
religion of '.''rzT 'Z^r 
Some as their / 
snn: others. :' 

the ezrth: others, the nre. ic 
&C. The prominent character- 
istics of their frorship "wsr^ 
o'tscenity and blood. ^^de 
GcTkiKs H''stcncal CcllechcKs 
c^ the Indians in Xrx-Eng- 
land. .\ cooy of this work 
will be fonnd in the library of 
the Xew-York Historical So- 
ciety. 



32 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

enjoyed his dominion, no mind can conjecture, unless 
God in his holy providence had raised up just such a 
race of men as our progenitors, to disseminate the 
glorious Gospel in these ungenial climes. The Pil- 
grims of New-England were men who had pity on 
the heathen. Their spirit was the spirit of missions. 
They gloried in the prospect of planting Churches, and 
propagating a heaven-born religion. It was this that 
mitigated the horrors of their persecution at home, 
and that inspirited them with so much patience and 
heroism abroad. Among the early settlers of New- 
England, you not only find the Mayhews, but others 
of a kindred, if not a superior spirit. Elliott, that 
famed "apostle of the Indians," was one of the chosen 
band that followed up the first colony;^ and Bourn, 
Treat, Sergeant, Edwards, Brainerd, and Hawley,^ 
soon became either coadjutors or successors in the 

^ The Rev. John Elliott, min- ourable remembrance as a 
ister of Roxbury. Massachu- faithful and devoted mission- 
setts, came to this country ary. 

eleven years after the land- The Rev. Samuel Treat was 

ing at Plymouth. He was in- the first minister of Eastham, 

tensely devoted to the work of Massachusetts, and devoted 

evangelizing the Indians. He much of his time and attention 

published the New Testament to the Indians. He had under 

in the Indian language, and in him four Indian teachers, who 

a few years the whole Bible, read in separate villages on 

and several other books. He es- every Sabbath, excepting ev- 

tablished schools and Churches ery fourth, when he himself 

among them with great sue- preached the sermons which he 

cess; and, after a life inde- prepared for them in their own 

fatigablv devoted to this cause, language. 

died in the eighty-sixth year of The Rev. John Sergeant was 

his age. a native of Newark, New- 

* The Rev. Richard Bourn Jersey, and was a most faithful 
was one of the first emigrants servant of Jesus Christ among 
from England, who settled at the Houssatonnoc. or Stock- 
Sandwich. He was pastor of bridge Indians. He was suc- 
an Indian Church at Marshpee, ceeded by the Rev. Jonathan 
wViich was composed of his Edwards, to all whose excel- 
own converts, and which was lencies as a scholar and a di- 
constituted by Elliott and Cot- vine, we may add the labours 
ton. He is deserving of hon- of six years as a missionary. 



GARDINER SPRING 33 

work. The prosperity of their labours was almost 
without a parallel. The darkness, the thick darkness, 
which covered the people, began to flee away.^ Yes, 
it has gone — and now, what do we see? An army of 
ministers — a world of Bibles — I had almost said, a 
continent of Churches, where, two hundred years ago, 
not a solitary missionary of the cross had ever trodden 
the desert, not a Bible had blessed the cell of the 
savage, not a Church had lifted its spire amid the trees 
of the forest. The war-whoop has ceased, and the 
angel "having the everlasting Gospel to preach unto 
them that dwell on the earth," in his flight over this 
New World has proclaimed, "Glory to God in the 
highest; peace on earth, and good will to men." 

The spirit of evangelizing their fellow-men did not 
soon forsake the bosom of our fathers, nor has it left 
the bosom of their children. It has lived from gener- 
ation to generation; it has diffused its blessings; it 
has marked the course of the Pilgrims wherever they 
have gone. Let any man sit down to the sober ca.1- 

The labours of David Brain- educated as missionaries. This 

erd are fresh in the recollec- establishment resulted in the 

tion of every friend of mis- foundation of Dartmouth Col- 

sions. lege, of which Dr. Wheelock 

Gideon Hawley also is a was the first President 

name that ought not be for- ^ Pre-dous to the death of 

gotten. He commenced his the venerable Mayhew, about 

missionary labours at Stock- two-thirds of the inhabitants 

bridge; thence made an excur- on Martha's \"ineyard were 

sion to the Mohawks : thence reckoned as "praying Indians." 

to the Oneidas and Tuscaro- There were thirty Indian tnin- 

ras; thence to the Six Nations isters. In 1634, there were 

on the Susquehanna river, de- fourteen towns within the ju- 

voting more than half a cen- risdiction of Massachusetts col- 

tury in benevolent exertion to ony. inhabited by these evan- 

prcmote the salvation of the gelized heathen, 

heathen. For the substance of the in- 

The Rev. Eleazer Wheelock, formation on this and the pre- 
D.D. while a minister at Leb- ceding page, ^-ide Gookin's 
anon. Connecticut, established ColUctions. Allen's Biograph- 
an Indian school, where a ical Dictionary, and the Low- 
number of Indian youth were don Missionary Register. 



34 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

culation, and he \vill be convinced that a full share of 
the exertion which has been made by the American 
Churches, with the view of bringing back this lost 
and guilty world to God, may be attributed to the 
descendants of New-England. Not a few of those 
benevolent designs which have poured their blessings 
on mankind during the last century, and which have 
increased in number and become magnified in impor- 
tance within the last thirty years, were originated and 
brought to maturity, and have been preserved in pro- 
gressive advancement by the same active and perse- 
vering class of men. New-England has been scatter- 
ing her sons and her daughters, in untold numbers 
and rapid succession, over this fertile continent; and 
wherever they have been dispersed, the "wilderness 
has blossomed as the rose, and the desert has become 
as the garden of the Lord." 

While on this part of my subject, a thought occurs 
to which I wish it were in my power to impart all the 
importance and urgency it demands. Our ancestors 
were men who were not ashamed of their dependence 
on the immediate and omnipotent influences of the 
Holy Spirit. They preached, they acted as though 
the motto of their every enterprise was, "Not by might, 
nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of 
hosts." They took great pains to bring forward, in 
the personality and divinity of his nature, and the 
efficiency and glory of his office, that Almighty Agent, 
who is commissioned in the method of redemption, to 
make "the gospel the power of God unto salvation." 
Their best adapted, their most self-denying, their most 
vigorous exertions, they saw and felt were absolutely 
dependent on the Holy Ghost. And it is this thought 
that sunk them so often on their knees; that excited 
such ardent and irrepressible desire for the salvation 



GARDINER SPRING 35 

of men ; that roused the spirit of confident and intrepid 
exertion, and that inspired their bosoms with the all- 
conquering sentiment, confidence in God. They were 
men whose hearts were set on revivals of religion. 
Their Churches were early in the habit of looking up 
to God for the effusions of his Holy Spirit, and of 
setting apart seasons of prayer for this most desirable 
and important blessing. And many were the seasons 
of the outpouring of his Holy Spirit upon that fa- 
voured land. Very early after the establishment of 
these infant settlements, the presence of God was won- 
derfully manifested in the years 1629, 1630, and 1637; 
and, in allusion to these seasons of mercy, one of 
them says, "In those days God, even our own God, 
did bless New-England." ^ In the year 1680, there 
was a general revival of religion in Massachusetts, 
Plymouth, and Connecticut.^ About the year 1705, 
very remarkable were the visitations of redeeming 
grace to a portion of the Massachusetts colony.^ In 
1679, 1683, 1696, 1712, 1718, and 1721, the blessing 
of God descended in a remarkable manner upon some 
of the Churches in the interior of Massachusetts and 
Connecticut.^ In 1727, after the great earthquake 
throughout New-England, there was a very general, 
deep, and saving impression upon the minds of multi- 
tudes in different parts of the country.^ In 1734, 
there was a general revival of religion in Northampton, 
which extended to several towns in the county, and 
also to others in Connecticut.^ About the year 1740, 
the Spirit of God attended the ministrations of the 
Rev. George Whitefield, in different parts of New- 

^ Gillie's Historical Collec- "Vide Preface to the third 

tions, vol. i. edition of Edwards's Narra- 

° Ibid. vol. ii. tive, by Dr. Sewall, Mr. Prince, 

^ Ibid. vol. ii. and others. > 

* Ibid. ° Edwards's Narrative. 



36 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

England and America; and the same influence also 
accompanied the labours of the Rev. William Ten- 
nent.^ From the year 1740 to 1745, there was a sig- 
nal manifestation of Divine power, grace, and mercy, 
which ought never to be brought into view without 
sentiments of sacred wonder and praise. Upwards of 
one hundred and twenty ministers, and sixty-eight in 
convention, bore public testimony of their firm per- 
suasion in the power, reality, and genuineness of this 
work; and, at the close of their memorable attesta- 
tion, say, "And now we desire to bow the knee in 
thanksgiving to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, that our eyes have seen, and our ears heard 
such things." - 

The early days of New-England, my friends, were 
not days when revivals of religion were reproached 
as the reveries of deluded fanatics, or the effect of 
priestcraft and ecclesiastical policy; nor when good 
men stood aloof from them, because they were ap- 
prehensive that they savoured more of extravagance 
than solid piety. No — they were not satisfied with- 
out them. And it was for such scenes of mercy that 
a benignant Providence directed their course to this 
new world. For two hundred years New-England 
has been blessed with the effusions of the Spirit above 
any other section of our country, and these American 
Churches above any other section of the earth. The 
unction has been preserved and diffused. Different 
sections of the continent have been the theatre of these 
wonders ; and it appears to us, that one grand design 
of the colonization of the Pilgrims was, that the work 
of redemption should ultimately be carried forward 
on the largest scale in the western world, 

^ Prince's Christian History, will be found at length in Gil- 
and Gillie's Collections. lie's Historical Collections, vol. 

^ This interesting document ii. p. 306. 



GARDINER SPRING 37 

But there is an additional consideration, which we 
may not pass over in silence. The wisdom of Divine 
Providence, in the removal of our ancestors, appears 
in a very interesting light, in the influence of their 
doctrinal belief and practical piety. In this respect, 
they were men of "sterner stuff" than some of their 
puny descendants. In sentiment, they adhered rigidly 
to the doctrines of the Reformation. The doctrine 
of the Divine existence in a Trinity of Persons; — 
the doctrine of the entire and complete sinfulness of 
all mankind by nature ; — the doctrine of the atonement 
by the vicarious sufferings of Jesus Christ; — the doc- 
trine of regeneration, or the necessity of a radical 
change of heart by the special agency of the Holy 
Spirit; — the doctrine of justification, by faith alone, 
in the imputed righteousness of the Son of God; — the 
doctrine of the certain and final perseverance of the 
saints ; — and the doctrine of the everlasting blessedness 
of the righteous, and the everlasting punishment of the 
wicked — are those which the fathers of New-England 
considered fundamental to the system of Redemption. 
The Confession of Faith, drawn up by the Assembly 
of Divines at Westminster, may be considered as a 
fair exposition of their creed. While they did not 
bind themselves to a rigorous uniformity on all the 
numerous subdivisions of thought which are contained 
in so detailed a confession, they regarded this noble 
instrument as containing the great truths of the Bible, 
and as sufficiently explicit to distinguish the friends of 
our holy religion from every class of errorists in the 
world. ^ Though professed Calvinists, they were men 
of true liberality and original investigation. They 

^ This Confession was framed English Parliament in 1643. 
after the removal of our an- To show the high estimation 
cestors to this country. The in which the first Churches in 
Westminster Assembly was New-England held the West- 
convened as a Council to the minster Confession, in the year 



38 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 



neither despised nor gave implicit confidence to human 
authority;^ and their doctrines and their spirit have 
had no small influence on their descendants from gen- 
eration to generation. New-England has ever stepped 
forward the bold and successful advocate of the doc- 
trines of the Reformation. She has fearlessly driven 
them to their legitimate consequences; and, within the 
last two centuries, has done more to illustrate and 
defend them, than any other section of the Christian 



1648 a Synod was convened, 
with the view of adopting a 
system of Church discipline, 
and in the course of their ses- 
sions, unanimously passed the 
following resolution : — "This 
Synod having perused and 
considered, with much glad- 
ness of heart and thankfulness 
to God, the Confession of 
Faith, lately published by the 
Reverend Assembly of Divines 
in England, do judge it holy, 
orthodox, and judicious, in all 
matters of faith, and do there- 
fore freely and fully consent 
thereunto for the substance." 

^ There is an interesting fact 
in relation to the character and 
views of the Rev. Mr. Robin- 
son, which I am gratified to 
present to the reader in this 
place. Prince, in his New- 
England Chronology, has a 
quotation from a work of 
Governor Winslow, in which 
he says, that "when the people 
of Plymouth parted from their 
renowned Pastor, he charged 
us, before God and his blessed 
angels, to follow him no fur- 
ther than he followed Christ. 
And if God should reveal any 
thing to us by any other in- 
strument of his, to be as ready 
to receive it, as ever we were 
to receive any truth by his 
ministry. For he was very 



confident the Lord had more 
truth and light to break forth 
out of his holy word. He took 
occasion also miserably to be- 
wail the state of the Reformed 
Churches, who were come to a 
period in religion, and would 
go no further than the instru- 
ments of their reformation. 
As for example, the Lutherans 
could not be drawn to go be- 
yond what Luther saw ; for 
whatever part of God's word 
he had further revealed to Cal- 
vin, they had rather die than 
embrace it. And so, said he, 
you see the Calvinists : they 
stick where he left them — a 
misery much to be lamented. 
For though they were pre- 
cious, shining lights, yet God 
had not revealed his whole will 
to them ; — and were they now 
alive, they would be as ready 
to embrace further light, as 
that they had received. But 
withal, he exhorted us to take 
heed what we received for 
truth ; and well to examine, 
compare, and weigh it with 
other Scriptures, before we re- 
ceive it. For, said he, it is not 
possible the Christian world 
should come so lately out of 
such an antichristian darkness, 
and that full perfection of 
knowledge should break forth 
at once." — P. 89, 90. 



GARDINER SPRING 39 

world. The New-England divines, though differing, 
as we might naturally suppose men of bold and inde- 
pendent thought would differ, in some points of minor 
moment, are generally Calvinists of the first grade, 
and able defenders of the faith. ^ 

Nor was the piety of our forefathers less conspicu- 
ous than the purity of their doctrines. As though 
blessings were designed for this nation for a great 
while to come, her early colonists were not merely 
good men, but some of the best men the world has 
seen. About to make this happy land the theatre of 
memorable displays of his mercy, the Great Husband- 
man planted it with the choicest vine. "He sifted 
three kingdoms, that he might plant the American wil- 
derness with the finest wheat." A very faithful his- 
torian says of them, "There never was perhaps before 
seen such a body of pious people together on the face 
of the earth." ^ In all their designs and conduct, per- 
sonal and public, they were men who appear to have 
been governed by the fear of God and the love of 
Jesus Christ. They felt the importance, saw the 
beauty, and enjoyed the consolations of true godliness. 

' The New-England divines the doctrine was far from be- 
have usually, and I think with- ing novel, from this circum- 
out reason, been called Hop- stance alone his disciples were 
kinsians : but the fact is, they denominated Hopkinsians. The 
are decided and consistent Cal- writer is sensible of the im- 
vinists. As such Dr. Hopkins portance to be attached to the 
was always considered ; and as principles of the new school ; 
such his followers were uni- but that there is no such dif- 
formly called, until the famous ference between Calvinists of 
dispute in New-England about the old and of the new school, 
the means of grace, and the as ought to separate brethren, 
discussion of the question, is obvious from one fact, — The 
Whether the Scriptures contain great body of both have agreed 
any promise of grace to the in recommending Scott's Fam- 
doings of the unregenerate? ily Bible, and the Assembly's 
Dr. Hopkins had good sense Catechism, 
enough to espouse the negative " Prince's Christian History. 
of this question; and, though 



40 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

They were "children of the Hght and of the day;" 
"crucified to the world, and alive unto God ;" and, in 
their habitual conduct, exhibited the enlightened and 
holy zeal of sincere Christians. Nor were they negli- 
gent in the performance of external duties. No people 
cherished a more sacred regard for the holy Scrip- 
tures; none paid a more reverential respect to the 
Lord's day; none more punctual and profitable atten- 
tion to family worship and the religious education of 
children. Nor was their morality less uniform and 
consistent than their religion.^ It was the deep and 
thorough morality of the gospel, pervading alike the 
chair of magistracy, the pulpit, the bench, the work- 
shop, and the field. Vice and immorality sought a 
distant retirement, and scarcely found a place among 
them.^ And when in the progressive advancement of 
the colony, there appeared some symptoms of declen- 
sion, the whole land was filled with alarm. Ministers 
and people, rulers and subjects, were alive to the 
question. What is to be done, that these evils may be 
reformed ? ^ 

^ When they left Holland, government actually called a 

the magistrates of Leyden gave Synod of all the Churches in 

them this honourable testi- that colony, to consider and 

mony: "These Englishmen answer these two most impor- 

have lived among us now these tant questions: — i. What are 

twelve years, yet we never had the evils that have provoked 

one suit or action against the Lord to bring his judg- 

them." ments on New-England? 2. 

" In a sermon before the What is to be done that so 

House of Lords and Commons, these evils may be reformed? 

and the Assembly of Divines Among their answers to the 

at Westminster, the Rev. Mr. second question, the Synod ad- 

Firmin, who had resided some vised the several Churches to 

time in this country, said, "I an express and solemn renewal 

have lived in a country seven of their covenant with God 

years, and all that time I never and with one another. Imme- 

heard one profane oath, and diately following this, was the 

all that time I never did see a outpouring of the Divine Spirit 

man drunk in that land." in 1680. — Vide Gillie's Histor- 

' In 1679, the Massachusetts ical Collections, vol. ii. p. 20. 



GARDINER SPRING 41 

Such was the character and influence of the primi- 
tive colonists of New-England. And can we, can these 
United States, can the world be too grateful, that 
this important section of the earth was first settled by- 
such men? It was a concern of vast importance to 
the generations destined to inhabit this extended and 
fertile country, that its first settlers should be wise and 
good. Had New-England received her first colonies 
from countries where the refinements of modern phi- 
losophy had superseded the religion of the Bible ; where 
the faith and morality of the Gospel were a secondary 
concern, or the object of no concern; had her early 
colonists been a Laud, a Priestly, or a Belsham, in- 
stead of a Cotton, a Hooker, and a Davenport; had 
they been Atheists, Infidels, Jews, Socinians, or Uni- 
versalists, rather than well-informed and humble Chris- 
tians; and New-England been issuing a race of cor- 
rupting errorists, rather than scattering far and wide 
a collection of men who feared God and loved right- 
eousness; this anniversary would have kindled a very 
different flame in our bosoms, than that which now 
animates them, as we call to mind the faith and virtues 
which have been cemented with our literary and moral 
institutions, and which were imbedded in the very 
foundation of our colony. 

That was a "right way," a most wise Providence 
that "led forth" our fathers to this wilderness. Fu- 
ture generations, and other centuries, my friends, will 
appreciate it better than we. The spirits of the Pil- 
grims, — now the possessors of a richer inheritance, — 
now the inhabitants of a loftier and more command- 
ing world, — can look down the "descent of ages," 
and appreciate it better than we. And could they 
tell us, I have not a doubt they would rehearse in 
our ears a catalogue of results, with which this memor- 



42 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

able event cheers the prospect of their progressive 
eternity. 

In paying this tribute to New-England, let no one 
suppose, that, with all our filial partialities, we are igno- 
rant of her faults. Faults she would have, did she 
retain the primitive wisdom and integrity of the Pil- 
grims. But, my friends, in this survey of the foot- 
steps of Divine Providence in this favoured land, from 
the commencement of our national existence, truth 
obliges us to record, that her growth and prosperity, 
has been attended by a sensible and humiliating de- 
generacy. There are not wanting men and communi- 
ties who retain much of the rigid virtue and high mo- 
rality of our forefathers; but it cannot have escaped 
the observation of any impartial inquirer, if morality 
be regarded as our ancestors regarded it, that there is 
a manifest declension of public morals in the different 
States of New-England. We observe not now the 
purity and sincerity which so eminently distinguished 
the manners of our forefathers, and which dignified 
and adorned the age of New-England's simplicity. 
That universal regard for the institutions of the Gos- 
pel which elevated the Eastern so much above their 
sister States; which pervaded the old and the young; 
which influenced the legislative, the judicial, and the 
executive departments of her government; which gave 
such dignity to office, and such energy to law; and 
which on every side erected a bulwark against the en- 
croachments of irreligion and licentiousness: is found 
now, with few exceptions, only on the page of some 
antiquated statute took, or inscribed on the tomb of 
Puritanism. There has been also a growing inatten- 
tion to the religious and moral education of the young. 
Churches seem in a measure to have forgotten to 
"train up" their youth in the "nurture and admonition 



GARDINER SPRING 43 

of the Lord ;" and parents appear rather to have mani- 
fested a deeper concern to ingratiate their children 
with the "friendship of the world, which is enmity 
against God," than to restrain them from unhallowed 
indulgences, and imbue their minds with a sacred re- 
gard for the principles and duties of piety. In many 
districts of New-England, there exists a serious and 
alarming deficiency of the ordinary means of grace 
and salvation, occasioned no doubt, partly by the rapid 
increase of population, but radically owing to that 
criminal apathy to spiritual want, which has not merely 
disregarded the demands of an increasing population, 
but has suffered towns and villages to lie waste, where 
the fathers of New-England assiduously scattered "the 
seed of the kingdom," and watered it with their 
prayers and their tears. The increase of religious 
sects is an evil of no inconsiderable magnitude; and 
has had a baleful influence, not only in disturbing the 
harmony and diminishing the strength of the Churches, 
but in sinking the sacred character of the Gospel in the 
view of multitudes who were taught to respect it, and 
in leaving others to pass with less remorse and censure 
into the neglect of all religion. The almost entire 
neglect of Gospel discipline, is one of the features in 
New-England's degeneracy, which greatly obscures 
her ancient glory. The greater part of her Churches 
have thrown aside those common bonds of union, 
which, in the days of our ancestors, contributed so 
much to purity of doctrine and mutual comfort and 
edification ; while a growing contempt of creeds and 
confessions of faith has facilitated the encroachments 
of error, and given countenance to those who deny 
the essential truths of Christianity. It is obvious that 
this is an evil which crept into the Churches gradu- 
ally. For a long time, the people were much more 



44 NEW E\'GI_\XD SOCIETY OR-\TIOXS 

Calvinis^c in their principles than their ministers ; and 

-^ an r^nd snbierfnge lo conceal their 

.- : : ;> ... gr^at \'agT3eness and ambiguity in 

tiKxr paldic in^mjctjons, did the abettors of a loose 

liicoloigy ?. : . ^ ^ : ■.rrency to sentiments 

isinrh r.rv, ^ . : ihe oldest and most 

res . ... New-England ; and which 

' ~ . : . ..uve-v :c\v i' " "'- "npon the 

: ■? AroFT^e? . ..^ rsus Christ 

. :- ^ It camiot be 

. _:r;-£ii: iaith is inculcated 

:? r: New-Engiand, from that 

icvr wt . .: to Aer natrre land — 

; ; : : : — ^"^crrime exiles, 

"^ rt?5i9ola- 
rare ages: — which 



pireca5e3T t±>e rescr .: . . . . its 



seili-Tii: 



■a?: 



more z<: 
srr^r— 
arosB T-' 



xr^T" jnrnrrr^ ysL i prnmuss 



GARDINER SPRING 45 

mocks at the seriousness and spiritaality and sdf-de- 
votement of true religion, and which considers all the 
tenderness of an awal^ned conscience, all anxiety for 
the salvation of the soul, all the solemnities of convic- 
tion for sin, as well as "all joy and '^ v: bdieving/* 
the object of ridicule and sarca^*" — - whidi re- 

laxes the obligations of persons! -crelision; 

which makes no scruple in '^ t^o- 

ple an occasional indulgeni- r. :. ; .:.,:. —' 

fashionable vic^; and which often de- 
enough to caricature the simpii . :t: 
days. Yes, all this is to be feu ^ . : _ _^:__ — 
v.'here the daughter of Zion was once "'comely as Tir- 
zah, fair as the moon, and terrible as an anxry with 
banners" — ^where our fathers aijoyed such memorable 
effusions of the Divine Spirit, and beheld such illus- 
trious exhibitions of the Di^-ine glory — where so much 
has been accomplished, and so mudi endured, to ex- 
tend and perpetuate a "pure and nndefiled religion," 
There is something in the apostacy of these latter 
times to be bitterly bewailed; and if it were not an 
apostacy that involve the rejection of all the essential 
articles of the Christian faith : all that is binding in the 
plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures;^ all that 
is precious in the hopes of the Gospel; all that is holy 
in a Christian vralk and conversation;* and all that is 

^ As conclusive evidence of the Gospels hare been rejected, 

the tmth of this observatiOTi, and nearty all the fandameotal 

we refer to the fact, that the doctrines explained awajr. We 

Socinians of Boston are the might also advert to the disre- 

known patrons of the "Im- spectfnl language with whidi 

proved version of the New even the tmieamed of the So- 

Testament." One of their pub- dnian party are taught to 

lications. The General Reposi- speak of the Epistles. 

tory, p-jb!i;hed at Cambridge, "Dr. Priestlv himself ac- 

declares it to be "a version far knowledges that "a great nran- 

more farthftd, more correct, ber of the Unitarians of the 

and more intelligible, than that present age, are only men of 

in common use." And yet ia good sense, and without muck 

this Tersion, whole chapters of practical religion: and there is 



40 XEW EXGLAXD SOCIETY ORATIOX5 

: . ::: the -.:-.: ,- ?f the eremal world : the 
lecxi-iij^rie? cf : . ^ Cl^CI^Ti^Tr■^"'C^e migiii, perhaps, 
£1 ihe presr'-" ::_-:-nr. \riih some justice be con- 

adered psr- . :? the claims of mith and religion. 

But we dare ncc suppress the fact, and to ns ii is a 
sotnTe :" "'~f -T---r^: ~ff. "'thai manv of the sons 
ci the J . , ■:er5 the Lord:"" "have pro- 

voked : _ ^- to anger;" "are grze 



:: becciiDes tis, " * rh exnltaiion. t: 
; _re the v^— f^- ": r---- --: ^ - 

rcis, w: " iiive : ; . : r care, 

^:-., :: theT5-.:__ ._. :'-; ;_:;:..<= called 

the^ stnrts- Whererer ; z=:ez: zzzj be cast, von 

"^"i '^ . ' '.7 re-ove. anQ Oieieri -~ -' ■ 

ate '. i :>^_j-i . — ~t3enc£ rr -?" ' " ' _ 

■W2S 1505: worthv." Yoirr cl" rs 



oi 



and see. and a^ frr th't :li pith5. where is d^e g~!>od 



GARDINER SPRING 



47 



ent day are calculated to prove your sincerit}*, and to 
discover the secrets of your heart. ''\\'atch unto 
prayer." Alike fearless of the allurements of that mod- 
ern Catholicism, which chants forth the praises of its 
own liberality ^ only to betray the unthinking and the 
unwary, and fearful of that "philosophy and vain de- 
ceit," where many a mind shoots ahead of its own ex- 
pectations, and passes beyond the hope of recover)- or 
return;- "contend, earnestly, for the faith once deliv- 
ered to the saints." "Be ye holy, harmless, without 
rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse genera- 
tion, among whom ye shine as lights in the world." 

^Ministers of New-England! "Hold fast that you 
have received, let no man take your crown." "The 
time will come," yea, is now come, "when men will 
not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts, 

religion. In reply to a direct 
avowal on the part of the au- 
thor, that he was a Trinitarian 
and a Caivinist, Dr. Priestly 
said, 'I do not wonder that you 
Calvinists entertain and ex- 
press a strongly unfavourable 
opinion of us Unitarians. The 
truth is, there neither can, nor 
ought to be, any compromise 
between us. If you are right, 
zve are not Christians at all; 
and if u'e are right, j-ou are 
gross idolaters.' And nothing 
certainlj- can be more just.'" 

* Dr. Priestly says of him- 
self, "He was once a Caivinist, 
and that of the strictest sect; 
then a high Arian, next a low 
Arian ; then a Socinian ; and in 
a little time a Socinian of the 
lowest kind, in which Jesus 
Christ is considered a mere 
man, as fallible and peccable 
as Moses, or any other Pro- 
phet." He also says, "/ do not 
know when tny creed will be 
fixed!" 



^ In a very excellent sermon, 
preached by the Rev. Dr. Sam- 
uel Miller, not long since, at 
the ordination of the Rev. Wil- 
liam Xevins, as Pastor of the 
first Presbj-terian Church in 
Baltimore, after expressing his 
views of the "dreadful and 
soul-destroying errors of Arius 
and Socinus," the Rev. author 
subjoins the following note: — 

"The above language, con- 
cerning the destructive nature 
of the Arian and Socinian her- 
esies, has not been adopted 
lightly; but is the result of se- 
rious deliberation, and deep 
conviction; and in conformity 
with this view of the subject, 
the author cannot forbear to 
notice and record a declaration 
made to himself, by the late 
Dr. Priestly, two or three 
3-ears before the decease of 
that distinguished Unitarian. 
The conversation was a free 
and amicable one, on some of 
the fundamental doctrines of 



48 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itch- 
ing ears, and shall turn away their ears from the 
truth." The prevalence, the deception, the dishonesty 
of error, are no cause of despondency to the friends 
of the "truth as it is in Jesus." Perilous times may 
come; but in a little while, the Church shall put on her 
glory. Do not dissemble; do not wrest the Scriptures 
from their native import ; but seize on every opportu- 
nity to manifest your adherence to the adorable mys- 
teries of the Gospel. Stand up to your work; and be 
assured you have nothing to fear, but from the unfaith- 
fulness of a shameful neutrality in a cause which is 
identified with your Redeemer's glory. 

Fellow-immortals ! see how every thing is measuring 
out the span of human life, and hastening one gener- 
ation after another to eternity. Before another cen- 
tury shall pass away, other men will walk these streets, 
and be invested with these possessions. Before an- 
other anniversary, the places which now know you 
may know you no more. Forget not the God of your 
fathers. Come out from the world, and live as "pil- 
grims and strangers on the earth." And in a little 
while, all your wanderings shall be over : chastened by 
the trials of earth, and exalted by the spirit of heaven, 
you shall be partakers of a rich, a glorious inheritance, 
and enjoy the "rest which remaineth for the people 
of God." AMEN. 



REMARKS 

ON THE CHARGES MADE BY THE Rev. GARDINER 

SPRING, D.D., AGAINST THE RELIGION AND 

MORALS OF THE PEOPLE OF BOSTON 

AND ITS VICINITY 



ADVERTISEMENT 

WE think it proper to prefix some account of the 
occurrences which have led to the present publica- 
tion. The New England Society of this City, animated 
by the spirit which seems everywhere to have pervaded 
the descendants of the Pilgrims, had resolved to celebrate 
the second centurial return of the day of the landing of 
their fathers, with becoming solemnities. They requested 
the Rev. Dr. Spring to deliver a discourse on this occa- 
sion, and his acceptance of this office was publicly an- 
nounced, and a general invitation given to all of New 
England origin to attend its delivery. No one could have 
imagined that this would be deemed a fit opportunity for 
holding up to severe remark, the imputed heresies of any 
portion of that Society which had requested the discourse, 
or of those who were thus called on to unite in the cele- 
bration of the day. It was, however, so used. Yet, had 
the Reverend Gentleman confined himself to an exposi- 
tion of the dangerous nature of the opinions held by us — 
had he even confined himself to reflections upon the con- 
sequences of those opinions, as exhibited in the immoral 
and scandalous lives of the Unitarians of this city, we 
could have been silent. But when he denounced the de- 
generacy of our Clergy — when he ascribed to them, and 
to their flocks, the loose morals of a religion not founded 
on the Bible — when he assailed the character of the place 
of our birth, and of all which it contains most dear and 
most sacred — our most valued friends, and the institu- 
tions from which we have derived all that we possess of 

51 



52 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

knowledge, of virtue, or piety, we could not forbear at- 
tempting their vindication. 

With this view, two of our number called on the 
Rev. Dr. Spring on the day after the celebration, and re- 
quested a copy of his remarks upon the state of morals 
and religion in the metropolis of New England, and its 
vicinity. Whatever reports may have been circulated on 
the conduct of these gentlemen at the interview in ques- 
tion, we dare afBrm, that no symptom of rudeness, or of 
anger, could have been detected by any impartial ob- 
server. They frankly, but coolly explained the object of 
their visit — they would not disguise, that their feelings 
had been hurt by the charges Dr. Spring had made, and 
they presumed he would not refuse a statement of them. 
They did not wish to put their request upon the ground 
of right, but they confidently expected his compliance. 
In any remarks they might feel compelled to make upon 
his discourse, they were anxious to avoid all misrepresen- 
tation; and they reminded him, that should he refuse to 
grant their request; he would not complain of any mis- 
takes which might be made in stating the substance of his 
obnoxious reflections. To this honest avowal of their 
wishes and designs, the Rev. Gentleman observed, that his 
language had been too unequivocal to admit of misrepre- 
sentation. He would, however, take the request into se- 
rious consideration. It was observed by the other gen- 
tlemen, that on such occasions as had produced the dis- 
course of the 22d, the orator was often called on hastily, 
and it was very allowable and proper, before submitting 
such a work to the press, to revise and alter it ; but under 
the circumstances of this case. Dr. Spring would perceive 
the propriety, if he gave a copy, of giving it as it was de- 
livered. Dr. Spring said he should not pledge himself to 
any course. What he had done was from a sense of duty. 
The reflections of which we complained had been written 
advisedly, and zvith counsel. He repeated, he would take 
the subject into consideration, and appointed an inter- 
view with the gentlemen on the following Monday at 



GARDINER SPRING 53 

noon, before which, he said, he should have time to con- 
sult with his friends. 

The same gentlemen, accordingly, waited on Dr. Spring 
at his house, at the time appointed. A note was handed 
them at the door, of which the following is a copy : 

Monday, December 25, 1820. 
Gentlemen, 

The object of your call on Saturday evening, was of so 
extraordinary a character, and I am sorry to say, was 
presented with so little civility, and so much menace, as 
to impose upon me the painful obligation of declining to 
comply with your request. 

I am, gentlemen. 

Your obedient servant, 

Gardiner Spring. 
Messrs. . 

To this note the following reply was returned on the 
evening of the same day : 

Rev. Gardiner Spring, D. D. 
Sir, 

We have read your note of this morning with no 
little surprise. We are entirely unconscious of the in- 
civility or menace which you mention. We simply asked 
as a favour, what we thought, under the circumstances, 
could not have been refused — a copy of that part of a 
sermon delivered by you upon an occasion of universal 
interest to all of New England descent, which contained, 
what we deemed an unjust, and which was certainly an 
unprovoked attack, upon many of our most valued friends, 
and upon a class of Christians in which we are included. 
There was, sir, no incivility and no menace, except per- 
haps, that we told you in honest plainness, that if the 
character of your discourse was such as we supposed, we 
might deem it our duty to refute its misrepresentations; 
for we would not that you should be ignorant of the ob- 



54 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ject to which we might apply the copy we requested. We 
are sure that the reason you have alleged for refusing our 
request did not occur to you at the time. There was 
nothing in your manner or conversation which implied 
that you conceived that you had been menaced, or treated 
with incivility. Why, sir, did you say, that you would 
take the subject into serious consideration? Why did 
you, at the close of the interview, invite us to call upon 
you at 12 o'clock this day, after you should have had an 
opportunity to consult your friends? Considering the 
nature of the charges which you have thought proper to 
make, and the circumstances of our interview, we cannot 
but consider your present excuse as very ill founded. If 
upon reflection, you should think it your duty to comply 
with our request, we shall be gratified by its being done 
as speedily as may comport with your convenience. 

We are, sir, anxious that this matter should be placed 
upon its true merits. We repeat, that we are utterly un- 
conscious of having said or done anything at which you 
could justly take offence; nor had we the slightest idea 
that offence had been taken, until so informed in your note. 
If you will favour us with a statement of any expressions 
used by us which you think unwarrantable, we shall know 
wherein we are supposed to have erred, and we shall be 
very ready to make any reparation which the case can 
warrant. We are. Sir, 

Your obedient servants, 
Monday evening. , 

To this, no reply has been received : We shall, there- 
fore, subjoin a sketch of the remarks made by Dr. Spring 
in the discourse referred to, as collected from several of 
our number who were present at its delivery. We do not 
of course, vouch for the correctness of particular expres- 
sions ; but the spirit, and in most instances, the language, 
we believe, is faithfully given. We would more cheer- 
fully have cited the discourse exactly as delivered, had 
the author permitted. 



GARDINER SPRING 55 

After stating that the object of the Pilgrims in coming 
to this western world, Avas to establish liberty of con- 
science, and the right of private judgment, for themselves 
and their posterity, so that they might safely make the 
Word of God the man of their counsel and the only guide 
of their faith ; and after reciting the religious creed of the 
Pilgrims and their early descendants, and noticing a meet- 
ing of the Clergy of Cambridge, at which, he said, an 
unanimous vote was passed, approving of the doctrines 
decreed by the Westminster Assembly of Divines, for sub- 
stance, he remarked, that this liberty of conscience and 
right of private judgment might be abused and extended 
to dangerous lengths ; that he could not, dared not refrain 
from declaring on this occasion, that in some parts of 
New England it had been so extended ; that pure and 
orthodox religion had of late declined there to an alarm- 
ing degree, particularly in the metropolis, where a loose 
and easy religion was now preached — that the glory had 
departed from many of the ancient churches — the Sabbath 
was profaned — family religion neglected, or nearly ex- 
tinct — and a laxity in morals, and rapid increase of vice, 
the natural consequence of this departure from the faith 
of our fathers, and the religion of the Bible, was every- 
where to be observed. "We look in vain," said he, "for 
the virtue, the integrity, the piety, and the firmness of her 
first Clergy — where can we now find such men as Ed- 
wards, Fuller, Sewall, Mather, &c. Comparatively few 
are left in the land, particularly in Boston and its vicinity, 
A thick moral darkness broods over that once highly 
favoured and most exemplary spot, and the prospect into 
futurity is gloomy and distressing to those who love the 
Lord Jesus in sincerity and truth. It is mortifying to see 
this great falling off — our ancestors were made of sterner 
stuff than some of their puny descendants," &c. After 
speaking of the churches and schools which were planted 
and established by our pious forefathers, and the immense 
benefits that have been derived from them by all, he asked, 

"What would have been the condition of New Eng:- 



56 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

land now, my friends, if the men who first landed on the 
rock at Plymouth, instead of being pious Christians — had 
been Infidels, or Jews, or Mahometans, or Catholics, or 
Arians, or Socinians?" 

On these charges, we now proceed to offer a few re- 
marks. We would first observe, however, that we should 
not have thought it necessary to obtrude upon the public 
so much in detail, occurrences in which we have only a 
personal concern, had not many most injurious and ill- 
founded reports gone abroad, which it was thought proper 
to correct. 



REMARKS 



IT will be understood that we claim no right of super- 
intendance over the conduct of the Clergy. Denun- 
ciation from the pulpit, we have heard, and shall hear 
again, without remonstrance or reply. We regret that 
it has been thought necessary to pursue this course, 
although we are fully conscious that it is a sure method 
to fill our ranks. 

But we hope that we have some higher and better 
feelings, than those of mere sectarians. AVe repeat 
that no considerations shall induce us to interfere with 
the regular discharge of the official functions of a min- 
ister of the gospel, whatever may be our private senti- 
ments in relation to them. But the case now in ques- 
tion, falls under considerations totally distinct. The 
occasion which drew forth this singular discourse, ex- 
cited an interest common to all who were descended 
from the pure, honourable, and prolific stock of our New 
England ancestry; embracing at this day, immense 
numbers of every rank and character, and of every pos- 
sible diversity and shade of opinion, religious and po- 
litical. Still there was one close and endearing tie, 
which bound us all together. We were all descendants 
of the Pilgrims. To this chord, every heart responded, 
and this alone should have been sufficient for the ora- 
tor, the patriot and the Christian. If touched in a 
true and congenial spirit, it would have called up a 
thousand high and grateful recollections, brightened 

57 



58 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

and renewed a thousand endearing sympathies. This 
theme would have given full scope to the freest exer- 
cises of a spirit exulting in praise to God, or warming 
in benevolence to man. 

How was it possible, that upon an occasion like this ; 
an occasion rendered unusually solemn and interesting, 
by its occurrence at a point in the revolution of time, 
which, in this life can happen to no man twice; to what 
strange influence can it be ascribed, that a man selected 
to express the sentiments which must have glowed in 
the heart of every man who had a heart, and sentiments 
which every hearer would have re-echoed with enthu- 
siasm, should have deserted all the delightful themes 
of peace and harmony, common sympathy, and kin- 
dred affection — and for what? For theological con- 
tention — of all subjects the harshest, most dissocial, 
and discordant. Yet this individual was himself a de- 
scendant of the Pilgrims, and felt something of the 
spirit of the occasion; a reputable scholar, an upright 
man, and a minister of that Gospel which proclaims 
peace on earth and good-will to men. 

To such lamentable excesses are good men led by the 
fatal delusions of party spirit. In charity we must 
and do believe, that this intolerance proceeds from a 
sincere but mistaken zeal for the supposed interests of 
religion. But this is no justification, or if it be, it is 
equally sufficient for all bigotry and persecution. The 
temper and the heart have a mighty influence upon the 
judgment. How far its abuses may be excused or jus- 
tified, is for the decision of Him, who alone knoweth 
all our hearts, and will, in mercy, judge their errors 
and infirmities. For us, it is enough to say that the 
effects of persecution and violence are the same, 
whether they proceed from honest fanaticism, hypo- 
critical pretence, or causeless cruelty and hatred. 



GARDINER SPRING 59 

It would be uncandid and untrue, for the writers of 
this address to pretend an indifference upon those top- 
ics which divide the Christian community. We will 
not disown our faith. We are Unitarians, and we have 
embraced those doctrines and views of Christianity, 
which are usually found connected with what we deem 
the pure and scriptural truth of the Divine Unity. We 
wish the diffusion of these sentiments because we be- 
lieve they are the best antidote to the effects of a base- 
less creed, too often leading- to a gloomy superstition, 
and which has driven and still drives thousands to 
covert or avowed infidelity — because they tend to purify 
the heart — to exalt all its best affections, and extend 
their influence over the life — to reveal and endear to 
us, the just and parental character of God — and, in one 
word, to disseminate in their simplicity and power, the 
truths of that holy religion which was revealed on earth 
by his blessed Son. 

Such are our sentiments, long settled, deeply rooted, 
and frankly and openly avowed. Such the truths, 
which each of us will teach to his children, and, upon 
proper occasions, strive to disseminate within his hum- 
ble sphere of influence; but neither our talents — our 
knowledge — our stations, or habits of life, are such as 
to fit us for public theological controversy, and we will 
not so far forget ourselves, as to be draw^n into it. 

The reverend gentleman declares, and we doubt not 
truly, that he acted ''from a sense of duty." Alas! 
poor human nature! How much unkindness and un- 
charitableness are indulged, and how many bitter pas- 
sions are gratified, for conscience sake. But on this 
subject, there is no perfect rule, but that laid down by 
our Saviour : "Do unto others, as ye would that they 
should do unto you;" and there is no better mode of 
learning the true application of this rule, than to re- 



6o NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

verse the situation of ourselves, and those to whom we 
are opposed. Suppose that the reverend gentleman, 
upon whose discourse we are remarking, or any one 
of his friends or congregation, had, in compliance with 
a general invitation as one of the descendants of the 
first colonists of New England, attended the recent 
centurial celebration in one of the churches in Boston, 
or at the Rock of Plymouth; what would be his emo- 
tions, if the speaker of the day, passing from the topics 
of common interest, should feel impelled, by a sense of 
duty, to descant upon the moral and religious character 
of the City of New York — if he should inform his audi- 
ence, that in that benighted region, the Day-Spring of 
our blessed religion shone yet but in faint and infre- 
quent glimmerings, giving not light for vision, or 
warmth to quicken and mature the seeds of virtue and 
piety, which God hath planted in our nature; but a 
feeble radiance, just sufficient to render visible and ter- 
rific, the dark, vaporous, and chilling masses of an 
earth-born theology — that our clergy, a "pimy" and de- 
generate race — were men whose zeal for orthodoxy 
was far more than commensurate with their knowledge 
of the truth; with minds cramped and bowed down 
with the chains of systems imposed upon them by their 
sects, and which were converted, by their distempered 
fancy, into heavenly panoply — men rashly denouncing 
those judgments which the Omnipotent hath reserved 
for his own infliction, upon their fellow Christians as 
honest, as wise, as pious as themselves, because they 
have dared to reject the vain schemes of man's device, 
and to study for themselves the revelation of our Sa- 
viour — men, who to prove a favourite dogma, are capa- 
ble of citing to their deluded hearers, as the Word of 
God, a passage interpolated into Scripture, and else- 
where acknowledged, by all respectable critics, even of 



GARDINER SPRING 6i 

their own party, to be spurious — dishonouring God, by 
attributing to him the attributes which a savage as- 
cribes to his deity, and HbelHng their fellow-creatures, 
by painting them as devils in disguise — solemnly de- 
claring, that the "vilest profligates upon earth would 
more probably be the objects of divine favour, than the 
most moral members of society" — that this character 
of the clergy and mode of preaching, had produced its 
correspondent and necessary effects, upon the character 
of the people of this city — that there were among us 
some avowed, and thousands of concealed, but prac- 
tical infidels, who rejected Christianity altogether, be- 
cause she was presented to them in a form so distorted, 
and they knew not that her real features were more 
attractive — that among the believers, or those who were 
called and thought themselves such, there was a want 
of information even upon topics the most prominent in 
controversial divinity, and on points of faith which 
they were most zealous to defend, almost inconceivable 
in a community so enlightened — that the influence of 
the clergy was zealously guarded by carefully closing 
the pulpit, and, to the extent of their power, every other 
avenue of information, against all access of sound rea- 
son and scripture truth, here termed heresy. 

(We pause to intreat our readers not to consider this 
as our language, or the expression of our sentiments. 
We ever have maintained a different tone of temper, 
and we hope and trust we ever shall. Had we heard a 
representation like this upon such an occasion, we 
should not have been backward to express our strong 
displeasure. Our readers will do us the justice to bear 
in mind, that we use this method to bring home better 
than we otherwise could, a sense of the real character 
of this transaction.) 

Let us then suppose the misguided orator, attempt- 



62 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ing to add the poignancy of fact to the vehemence of 
denunciation, should inform his hearers, that our city- 
was divided into rehgious factions, as bitter and un- 
charitable against each other, as they could be against 
those who differed most widely from them all — that 
those who pretended to a purer and exclusive ortho- 
doxy, had unsparingly denounced the reverend author 
of the address in question, and those who thought with 
him, as having apostatized from the true and ancient 
faith of New England, from the doctrines of Mather 
and Edwards — as seducers of souls, "and supporters of 
tenets, whose legitimate and only just conclusion, was 
downright atheism" — that these denouncers, had so 
far excited the passions, and inflamed the bigotry of 
their hearers, that in a religious assembly so numerous 
that it might be termed a fair representation of the 
religious public, all those who thought with this gen- 
tleman had, after a full accusation and defence, and 
long debates protracted through numerous meetings, 
been deliberately and solemnly pronounced unworthy 
and unsafe to be sent upon a Christian mission. 

Let us suppose that the preacher in the further dis- 
charge of the duty imposed upon him by the dictates 
of his conscience, should proceed to draw a picture of 
the morals of this community, as flattering as his de- 
lineation of their religious tenets, and that in charity, 
he should ascribe all the errors of our practice, to the 
errors of our faith — that he should represent the great 
majority of the inhabitants of this city, as living with- 
out any regard to religion or attendance upon public 
worship — should state that the number and publicity of 
places of resort for drunkenness and debauchery, was 
greater than any experience or knowledge of his hear- 
ers could render credible — that the Sabbath was con- 
stantly and openly profaned — that on that day shops 



GARDINER SPRING 63 

were everywhere open to supply all the gratifications 
of the senses, and incentives to excess — and that the 
principal avenues of our city then presented a spectacle 
more nearly resembling a race course, than the silence 
and solemnity which should pervade a Christian land. 

Will the reverend gentleman, in the expression of 
sincere truth, and the exercise of devout piety, lay his 
hand upon his heart, and say whether he should deem 
such an attack as becoming the courtesies of polished 
life, or as befitting the character of a Christian. Let 
him say whether such a representation would be more 
distorted from the truth than his own, or more calcu- 
lated to excite hatred and ill-will in the breasts of those 
assembled to commemorate an event, alike interesting 
to all, and with hearts prepared for all the pure and 
sweet influences of charity and love. 

Let him reflect whether it was well, or kindly done, 
to bring a railing accusation against his fellow Chris- 
tians, who were, at that moment, assembled at the rock 
where our common ancestors first touched our soil, and 
supplicating the Throne of Grace for a blessing upon all 
their brethren, in whatever distant lands they may now 
be scattered. 

It is now time to state, distinctly, the motive and 
object of this appeal to the public, and this we shall do 
with honest plainness. 

We respect and love many who differ from us in 
religious faith. We intend to preserve these senti- 
ments of regard, and to retain the habits of social inter- 
course. We hope to unite with them in petitions and 
thanksgivings to the Throne of Grace, upon all occa- 
sions of common interest. We design to aid them, and 
to receive aid from them, in our united endeavors for 
the interests of knowledge, morality, and religion. In 
literary and social institutions, we should be happy to 



64 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

associate ourselves with them as common friends. We 
mean to hail them at our feasts and festivals, and 
frankly to extend and receive the right hand of fellow- 
ship, and the smile of good will. Those who cannot 
reciprocate these sentiments, we can only pity. We 
will not interfere with them but in self-defence; but 
they cannot and shall not drive us from our ground. 
That ground is this: we will exercise the right of at- 
tending all public and social assemblies, as members of 
societies, or on the invitations of those who are such; 
upon all occasions, where we have a common right or 
a common interest, without the liability to have our 
feelings irritated, or insulted by any attack upon our 
friends, or ourselves; and if we are thus insulted, we 
shall deem it no apology to be told, that the outrage 
upon decorum, and the usages of cultivated life, was 
committed from a sense of duty, or the supposed obli- 
gation of conscience. 

This ground we must take, or be driven from society. 
We do not claim to be exempt from a full portion of 
human infirmity and passion, and we fear that a fre- 
quent recurrence of such scenes as that of the 22d of 
this month would engender such strife and contention 
as we do not like to think of. 

This stand, therefore, we shall take, and most assur- 
edly shall maintain. We speak not as boasting in our 
own strength in numbers; but from a secure reliance 
on the justice and magnanimity of public sentiment — 
upon that sense of propriety, decorum, and equal rights, 
which must ever form part of the character of a gen- 
tleman. 

We are happy and grateful to be able to acknowledge 
that this incident has proved the security of our reli- 
ance upon these principles. We have learned that this 
measure was taken upon counsel and advice, and its 



GARDINER SPRING 65 

author supposes it has received the sanction of pubHc 
approbation ; if so, the community contains more hypo- 
crites than we are inchned to beheve ; for we have found 
few, or none, wilhng to express the opinion that this 
discourse was decorous or well-timed. But if it were 
otherwise, we cannot perceive, that the attack was the 
more generous or manly, because it was made upon a 
few, and there were numbers to support it. We trust, 
however, that we do not mistake the public sentiment. 
This gentleman may, very probably, have counsellors 
about him, willing to advise to any course to which 
they find him previously disposed, and ready to support 
him after its adoption ; but theirs are not the sentiments 
of the public. If we can believe current report, and 
uniform information, we are well assured that there is 
no disposition to defend the propriety of some portions 
of the sermon delivered at the recent celebration, or of 
the equally improper, though less extended and severe 
reflections, which one individual thought it his duty 
to make against the Episcopal Church ; and which, with 
the singular felicity of adaptation which seems to have 
prevailed throughout the day, were delivered at the 
festive board, surrounded partly by Christians of that 
persuasion, and very shortly after the return of thanks 
in a truly catholic spirit, by a Bishop of that church, 
ail invited guest, who did not consider himself under 
any conscientious obligation to revile the dissenters 
from his communion. 

We believe the impression made upon the public is 
not materially different from what it would have been, 
if the gentleman appointed to deliver the address to 
the Historical Society at its last anniversary and who 
is known to be an Unitarian, should have thought it 
proper (of course from a sense of ditty) to entertain 
his hearers with a descant upon the errors, the follies 



66 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

and the vices, of those who did not subscribe to his re- 
hgious creed. The case would have been exactly par- 
allel, and we should hope would have met with a simi- 
lar result. 

If the charges thus preferred against the principal 
town in New England and its vicinity, had been true — 
that was not the time to make them, and his were not 
the lips by which they should have been uttered. If 
the occasion were suitable, we might here give advice, 
which though drawn from a profane source, may be 
useful in the pulpit; — "use them not according to their 
deserts, but after your own dignity — the less they de- 
serve, the more merit is in your bounty." But the 
charges were not true. God forbid that we should 
charge this gentleman with falsehood ! We firmly be- 
lieve that he is incapable of such a crime; experience 
has taught us to allow almost everything for the delu- 
sive influence of bigotry, and the sophistry of party 
zeal. But we say boldly, these charges are, in every 
respect and particular, in the spirit, and in the letter, 
utterly untrue. 

Upon this part of the subject, we speak with some 
knowledge, and some feeling. We deem it important 
that the truth should be known, because we feel as- 
sured that unfounded representations of the character 
and tendency of Unitarian principles, and the unjust 
and false prejudices with which the minds of sincere 
Christians have been industriously filled, have been in 
this country, the chief barrier to the prevalence of ra- 
tional religion. 

Before returning to the main subject of our atten- 
tion, we are happy to remark, that we find some things 
which we need not dispute in the representations of this 
gentleman. With him, we concur in advocating the 
right of toleration, and of private judgment in matters 



GARDINER SPRING ^1 

of religion, and can only wonder at the strange contra- 
diction between the principles professed, and their prac- 
tical application, as exhibited at the commencement and 
conclusion of this discourse. 

The character of the early settlers of New England, 
as drawn by him, is in the main such as meets our cor- 
dial approbation; and if a sense of truth would have 
compelled us to throw a few slight shades into the pic- 
ture, we do not complain that he has omitted them. 
We admit, likewise, that whatever reproaches may be 
justly cast upon the religious principles of Boston and 
the eastern part of Massachusetts, they apply to the 
greater portion of the people of that community; for 
this gentleman has truly stated, that there are few there 
now remaining who walk in what he calls the pure faith 
of their ancestors, and he has also truly stated that this 
defection (if such it be) is rapidly increasing. 

But here our concessions end. We mean to draw 
no invidious distinctions. They are not to our taste, 
and our consciences do not compel us to make them. 
But we do say, that the moral and religious character 
of the metropolis of Massachusetts, (for this is the 
peculiar point of attack,) will bear a fair comparison 
with that of any other large town in the United States. 
We enter into no subtleties of polemic discussion, but 
take the plain rule, "by their fruits shall ye know them." 

We are told that they have set up a new religion 
which is not founded on the Bible. If by this charge 
was meant, as we believe most of the hearers under- 
stood, that the authority of the Bible was disregarded 
by Unitarians, we have no words to express our feel- 
ings. The truth, is the precise reverse. In all their 
controversies, the constant appeal of Unitarians has 
been from all creeds, confessions of faith, and schemes 
of human device, to the Word of God itself; and their 



68 NEW EKGLAKD SOaETY DILUTIONS 

utter rejection and disregard of all authority but that 
of the Bible, has uniformly and notoriously been one 
of the most distinguishing features of their faith. 

The obsen-ance of the Sabbath day was the object 
of particular remark, and we doubt not that there is a 
verj' apparent difference betv\"een the mode in which it 
is now obsen'-ed, and the custom of former generations. 
But, right or wrong, this is the necessar}^ consequence 
of the progress of the age, and is e^'er}^vhere visible. 
No purity of faith, or strictness of orthodoxy, has pre- 
sented a different result, in any other portion of our 
country. Those who are strictly religious and obser- 
vant of its rites, are not now the great mass of any 
community. But on this point the comparison of Bos- 
ton with other towns would not be disadvantageous. 

It is indeed true, and a circumstance likely to be mis- 
construed abroad, that the inhabitants of that town 
of both political parties, have been in the habit of hold- 
ing political meetings on the e^^ening of the Sabbath 
preceding the first Monda}' of April. But it should be 
remembered, that their annual election for Governor 
and Senators, is upon the next day — ^that this is an 
ancient custom, and originated, no doubt, partly in the 
disposition indulged by our dissenting ancestors, who 
considered Saturday*, and not Sunda}^ evening, as holy 
time, and wished to mark strongl}' their departure from 
the rites of the English church. 

But we are told that family worship is out of use in 
this demoralized community. How did the gentleman 
come by the knowledge of the fact? Is it because the 
windows and doors are not thrown open, and observers 
called in to admire their fervent eloquence? We have 
no doubt that superficial observers have often drawn 
false inferences from that delicacy and solemnity of 
feeling which prevents a certain class of Christians 



GARDINER SPRING 69 

from bringing forward their religious faith, or their 
practical devotion, in such a manner as to render them 
subjects of public remark. The houses for public wor- 
ship are, in proportion to the population, as well at- 
tended, and if we are correctly informed, rather more 
numerous than in the other cities. 

But we cannot dwell on these details even for refu- 
tation. We will only say, that all the brethren of this 
gentleman have not regarded that community with his 
eyes. We were gratified by a remark very recently 
made by an orthodox clergyman who had resided there 
for some time, that deeply as he regretted the errors 
of their faith, he had never dwelt among a people whose 
deportment and conversation appeared to him more 
moral or religious. 

We feel, however, that we cannot pass from this sub- 
ject without calling on those whose eyes are not dis- 
torted, and whose hearts are not callous, to view it in 
another light. Is it then true, that this part of our 
country, one of the most ancient, and certainly not the 
least enlightened, is so blasted in its religious and moral 
character, by a pestilent heresy, as to be justly cut off 
from all kind sympathy, and charitable regard and 
held up as an object to avoid, if not to execrate? For 
what shall its inhabitants be denounced, save that they 
have dared to w^orship their Creator according to their 
own consciences ? Have they been found cold and nig- 
gardly in their hospitality to the strangers who have 
come among them — backward in their patronage of 
useful institutions — parsimonious in their charity — re- 
vilers of their brethren abroad — or disturbers of the 
public peace? Have they driven their fellow Chris- 
tians of differing sentiments from their communion 
table or even have they refused to welcome them to 
their pulpits? Have they been languid, or indecisive, 



70 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

in the generous effort to prevent the extension of sla- 
very? Have they withheld their full contributions to 
the societies for the dissemination of the scriptures? 
In what place was it that the Peace-Society, perhaps 
the noblest institution of the age, found its origin, and 
in what class of Christians its chief support? 

Regard for an instant the spectacle presented by the 
reviled town of Boston, and the community of which 
she is the head, at the very moment when these denun- 
ciations were uttering from a pulpit in New York. A 
very numerous convention is there now sitting to amend 
a constitution which the severance of Maine has ren- 
dered no longer applicable. What is the character of 
the delegation from this town of Boston? Federalists 
— and they have elected the most respectable of the 
republican party — Unitarians — and they have chosen 
delegates from among the orthodox clergy. Has there 
ever been assembled in this country a body of public 
men, more wise and honourable — of men actuated by 
higher and purer views of their duty to their country 
and their religion? Have not their characters and 
their conduct deserved and obtained the respect of wise 
and good men, of all parties, throughout the union ? Is 
it supposed that a similar convention in this or any 
other state would present an object better entitled to 
the honourable regard of the true lovers of their 
country ? 

Let those who are in the habit of disparaging that 
community, and of cherishing prejudice against their 
religious faith, pay some little attention to the proceed- 
ings of this convention. It will reward their pains. It 
will afford a refreshing interlude to the disgusting 
scenes of selfishness and turmoil, which such assem- 
blies too often present. Let the observer then inquire, 
who are the members that compose this dignified as- 



GARDINER SPRING 71 

sembly; he will find an immense proportion of those, 
for the errors of whose religious sentiments, one class 
of Christians can entertain no charity. He will find 
the whole weight and influence of these members ex- 
erted in support of order, good government, "piety, 
religion, and morality." He will find them struggling, 
and struggling successfully, to retain in that state, 
what scarcely exists in any other, a legal provision 
for the maintenance of public worship — and this upon 
no sectarian scheme, but allowing each individual to 
apply the contribution furnished by him, to the support 
of any sect which he may happen to prefer.^ 

One would have thought, that to an orator of New 
England descent, the present attitude of her principal 
state would, upon such an occasion, have furnished a 
more grateful theme than any deviations of speculative 
faith from the true line and square of orthodox opinion. 
But patience and time will work the remedy for these 
wrongs. The progress of opinion and religious toler- 
ation, has wrested civil power from religious bigotry, 
and the same progress will assuredly put a termination 
to such excesses as we now have occasion to lament. 

We have now discharged what we deem a duty to 
ourselves and those friends whom we most esteem and 
honour. It affords us no pleasure to be forced before 
the public, and we hope this is for the last time. But 
though we wish we do not sue for peace. When at- 
tacked, we shall be ever ready and able for defence. 
The God of truth has surrounded his own cause with 



^ We respectfully request such ning and Professor Everett; 

of our readers as are honestly and to compare their style, 

apprehensive of danger from spirit, and tendency, with those 

the diffusion of Unitarian senti- of the discourse of Dr. Spring, 

ments, to read the sermons re- Some portions of Mr. Everett's 

cently delivered in Boston upon sermon are now appearing in 

this subject, by Doctor Chan- our public prints. 



72 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

an ethereal armoury, whose temper its assailants know 
not, and against which their earthy weapons will but 
shiver into dust. 

If in the ardour of rapid composition, or the heat of 
wounded feeling, we have written aught that can offend 
the just and good, we ask for that charity which in this 
imperfect state all must need, and all should be ready 
to extend. 



THE DUTY AND REWARD OF 
HONOURING GOD 

JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 

(1777-1825.) 

From 1808 till his death Dr. Romeyn was well known as a 
preacher in New York City. He left an important pastorate 
at Albany to take charge of the Cedar Street Presbyterian 
Church, then just formed. Before these he had filled satisfac- 
torily posts in Schenectady and Poughkeepsie. He belonged 
to the Romeyn family of preachers, and was the son of Dr. 
Theoderic Romeyn, from whose work grew Union College. 
Among the labors without the immediate field of Dr. John 
Romeyn's parish may be mentioned his connection with the 
founding of Princeton Seminary. Not a student. Dr. Romeyn 
was yet a wide reader, and, though the power of his addresses 
is lost in the reading, he was an impressive speaker. From a 
description by his friend Dr. Vermilye, may be gathered some 
idea of his style. "He was little of a rhetorician, but there 
was in his words most momentous truth. There was life, 
vivacity, pathos, downright energy, perfect naturalness and 
sincerity, which gave the preacher the victory and made him, 
as for many years he was, the equal of his associates in popu- 
larity and success." 



SERMON 



I Samuel ii. 30. 

Them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise 
me shall be lightly esteemed. 

SUBORDINATION, in civil society, is essential not 
merely to its greatness, but to its very existence. 
Because all men are born free, it does not follow, that 
the distinction between rulers and their subjects is a 
matter of political compact, or the result of that supe- 
riority, which muscular strength, or providential ad- 
vantages, give to some over others. 

Government of every kind is an ordinance of God; 
and however diversified the opinions of men may be 
about the mode of its administration, it is essential to 
our social nature. From this ordinance, our connexion 
in the different relations of life, whether public or pri- 
vate, secular or religious, receives its good or bad char- 
acter ; its facility to produce the performance or neglect 
of duties ; its power to increase or meliorate misery, and 
its capabilities to consummate our eternal ruin, or to 
secure for us the blessedness and glory of heaven. The 
ordinance, however, must be correctly understood, that 
our social connexion may be the source of present and 
future real and permanent enjoyment, and not of dis- 
appointment and misery. 

75 



76 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

I have said that government of every kind is an 
ordinance of God. As such, it must be regarded, and 
its responsibilities met at all times, and under all cir- 
cumstances in which the persons governing may be 
placed. Hence arises the duty incumbent upon human 
authorities, to respect and obey the authority of God, 
inasmuch as they owe their existence as governments, 
and the right of exercising their gubernatorial power 
among their fellow-men, to his sovereign appointment. 

To this plain and incontrovertible truth God refers 
in the text, which constitutes a part of his message to 
Eli, who possessed the authority of Judge, High-Priest, 
and Father in Israel. In each of these offices — offices, 
the two first of which under the theocracy, were filled 
by special designation; and the last, throughout the 
Jewish dispensation, in consequence of the promised 
Messiah, was considered not merely a source of per- 
sonal endearments, or of clannish and national impor- 
tance; but a matter of special providence — Eli had 
failed to discharge his duty. Though a man manifest- 
ing the evidences of genuine piety, yet being imper- 
fectly sanctified, he acted under the influence of an over- 
weening attachment to his children, which caused him 
to honour them more than God, in suffering them with- 
out restraint, grossly to sin against God, though he 
was their civil ruler, their religious head, and their 
father. Hence God denounced his wrath against the 
house of Eli, cutting them off from the priesthood, and 
consigning them to disgrace and poverty. And as the 
people of Israel acquiesced in, if they did not approve 
of, the iniquity of the sons of Eli, thus answering a 
later description made of them by a prophet, "like peo- 
ple, like priest;"^ God in righteousness, not merely 
gave them a prey to the Philistines, but suffered the 
' Hosea iv. 9. 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 17 

ark, the symbol of his presence, to be captured, so that 
upon them as a nation, his providence wrote in legible 
characters, Ichabod, the glory is departed. 

Thus he verified his own declaration, both to Eli and 
Israel; a declaration involving in it principles of the 
last importance to the present and eternal welfare of 
men in their different social relations — "them that 
honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall 
be lightly esteemed." 

To these principles and the application of them to 
this anniversary, your attention is now solicited. 

I. The principles involved in God's declaration will 
be unfolded and illustrated. These cannot be dis- 
cussed at full length ; but their nature will be examined 
with sufficient minuteness to answer our present pur- 
pose. They are the following: 

I. God alone can confer upon the children of men 
real and permanent honour. 

By honour is meant any thing which renders indi- 
viduals praiseworthy, or commands esteem and vener- 
ation. The love of it, as it was originally implanted in 
the human constitution, was a love of conformity to 
God, the uncreated exemplar of moral perfection. Its 
influence therefore over the understanding, the heart 
and the life of man, so long as he continued in a state 
of innocence, was elevating and blessed. But sin per- 
verted it into a means of degrading and ruining thou- 
sands of our race. 

The grace of God revealed in the Scriptures is de- 
signed to counteract this perversion ; and in all cases 
where this grace has been made effectual, the love of 
honour has regained its original character, and pro- 
duces corresponding effects. It is one of the strongest 
passions of our nature, showing itself in our earliest 
vears, and being coeval with the first exertions of rea- 



78 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

son. As such, God addresses himself to it m the dis- 
pensations of his Providence and his Covenant relations 
to the children of men; saying, in the language of the 
text, "them that honour me I will honour — and they 
that despise me shall be lightly esteemed." 

I. In the dispensations of his Providence, honour, of 
every kind, or whatever gives weight, character, inflii- 
ence, and pozver, comes from him alone. 

He gives these things in a special manner, for his 
providence is "his most holy, wise and powerful, pre- 
serving and governing all his creatures and all their 
actions." He has not established general laws in the 
material and moral world, which uniformly and in- 
variably operate, producing by their own inherent 
power all the effects he intended they should ever pro- 
duce; because these laws are his works, and therefore 
cannot possess inherent power independent of himself. 
That which never would have existed, had it not been 
for the will of another, cannot possibly have any power 
in its constitution to continue itself in existence. For 
God to produce a creature independent of himself for 
one moment, is to bestow on that creature necessary 
existence ; which cannot be, because necessary existence 
belongs only to God. Besides, if these laws produce 
all that harmony and order which we see in the uni- 
verse, we ascribe to them consequences, which none but 
an infinite intelligence can produce; and, therefore, to 
be consistent, we must adopt the sentiments of those 
who say, every thing is a part of God, which is blank 
atheism. 

They therefore who speak with understanding on this 
subject, must be convinced that these laws are nothing 
but God himself managing and controlling his works 
directly and specially, in such a manner as is most con- 
sistent with the perfections of his nature. In a word, 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 79 

unless they consider God a mere indolent spectator of 
the Universe, they must grant he is every where present 
as an active intelligent Spirit, preserving and govern- 
ing all things which he has made. Thus he is repre- 
sented in the Scriptures, as exercising a special provi- 
dence, not only over great things, but those which are 
small ^ — not only over necessary things, but over con- 
tingent ones.^ This representation proves that there 
is no such thing as chance, or accident, or fortune, in 
the world. These are words we often hear used, but 
they have really no meaning; or if they have, are 
merely "names for the unknown operations of Provi- 
dence; for it is certain that in God's universe nothing 
comes to pass, causelessly or in vain." ^ 

Hence the honour which he gives is a special act of 
his absolute sovereignty. Inasmuch, however, as he 
is not bound to give rewards to the obedient, though 
bound to execute punishment on the disobedient, a 
question arises, on what ground does he act in giving 
rewards ? To honour him is the duty of all intelligent 
beings. Those who fail in the duty must meet with 
his righteous displeasure as their sovereign, whilst 
those who are faithful, do no more than their duty. 
Whence is it then, that over and above their protection 
and security guaranteed to them so long as they remain 
obedient, God has promised a reward f Such promise 
does not belong to the moral law, which, being written 
upon the heart of the first man at his creation, was the 
law of his nature. It is one of the sanctions of the 
positive law, which restricted man's use of the fruit of 
the trees of paradise. Thus, 

2. In the dispensing of honour in its different kinds, 

* Matt. X. 29, 30. Psal. cxivii. Exod. xxi. 13. Prov. xvi. 
9. Joel ii. 25. Matt. vi. 26. 33. 

""Jer. li. 16. Psal. cxivii. 16. ' Al. Turretini, Dissert, vi. 



8o NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

God acts not as a sovereign merely, hut as a sovereign 
who has entered into covenant relations zvith men. 

The positive law of which we have spoken, was con- 
verted into a covenant, commonly called a covenant of 
works. The penalty threatened, but not the promise, 
belonged to it as a law. While the man, from his de- 
pendant nature, was engaged to God by the law, God 
became gratuitously engaged to him by the promise.^ 
In this promise given to man in a state of upright- 
ness, God addressed himself to his hopes, as he did in 
the penalty to his fears. Nor does the covenant of 
grace in this respect vary from the first covenant; for 
its language is, "he that believeth shall be saved, but 
he that believeth not shall be damned." Between the 
two covenants there is a close analogy, so that the lan- 
guage of both to man is, "them that honour me I will 
honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly es- 
teemed." 

In both there is a direct appeal to the governing mo- 
tives of human conduct; motives arising out of our 
dependant nature, and our responsibility to God under 
the constitution of a covenant relation. And as there 
has been no other covenant relation between God and 
man, involving in it the salvation of men, than that of 
works and of grace; the nncovcnanted mercy, of which 
some talk much to make a parade of their charity, is 
merely the consignment of those towards whom the 
charity is professedly extended, to the penalty of the 
law without mercy, in case of their disobedience, and 
therefore a cruel mockery of huinan misery. 

II. No man, or number of men, can possess this hon- 
our, who do not honour God. 

You will recollect it is the honour which conieth from 
God. This is vastly dififerent from the honour which 
^ Gib's Sacred Contemplations. 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 8i 

man confers upon his fellow man. The latter is ephem- 
eral in its duration, vain in its nature, and unsatisfac- 
tory in its effects ; whilst the former is eternal, substan- 
tial, and blessed. Though dispensed in a sovereign 
manner, it is dispensed according to covenant relations, 
and upon the conditions contained in these relations. 
When the creature honours the Creator; the subject his 
Sovereign; and the redeemed sinner his reconciled God, 
then God honours him. 

Let us then examine for a moment the nature and 
the extent of this duty, together with the manner in 
which it must be performed. 

I. The nature of honouring God demands our at- 
tention. 

It is doing and declaring those things which show 
either his excellency, or onr reverent and superior re- 
gards to him. When he made the universe, as he could 
propose no higher object to himself, he made it for his 
own glory. When we fulfil this end, we honour God ; 
not by increasing his essential glory, but by manifest- 
ing our views and feelings of that glory, as exalted in 
excellence beyond our comprehension, and recommend- 
ing him as such unto others by our exertions. It is 
God whom we are thus to honour ; not the being of our 
fancy, pride, or unbelief, but the God of the Scriptures, 

FATHER, SON, AND HOLY GHOST, the JEHOVAH who 

hates sin and must punish the sinner. Without such 
an apprehension of his nature we cannot give him the 
honour due to his name; for we cannot acknowledge 
his perfections as we ought. In the face of Jesus 
Christ the Redeemer, he displays the honour due to 
him more conspicuously than in the works of creation 
and providence. It is impossible for us to enter fully 
into the nature of his revealed will, if we reject the di- 
vinity of his only begotten Son, and the efficacy of the 



82 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

atonement of that Son. In the cross of Christ we see 
mercy and truth met together ; righteousness and peace 
kiss each other. Jehovah, father, son, and holy 
GHOST, alone can be just and yet the justifier of the 
ungodly who believe in Christ. We know of no other 
God. No other has been revealed to us : no other made 
us. He it is whose glory the heavens declare, and 
whose handy-work the firmament showeth forth. 

2. The extent of honouring God is ascertained by 
our constitution, consisting of body and soul. 

Man is composed of two parts ; the one binding him 
to earth, the other connecting him with heaven. With 
the powers of the one, and the faculties of the other, 
he must fulfil the great design of his creation. Our 
bodies must be presented to God a living sacrifice, holy, 
acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service.^ 
Our members must be yielded as "sei*vants to right- 
eousness unto holiness." ^ Our souls must realize him 
as altogether honourable and glorious; must delight 
themselves in him supremely; desire more communion 
with him, and be tenderly and perseveringly solicitous 
to preserve alive this sense of the honour due to God. 

We cannot devote our bodies and spirits to any so 
properly as God. He is the Creator of both; and by 
the atonement of Christ hath redeemed them from de- 
struction. They are his, and ought to be exerted for 
his service, and for the manifestation of his glory. 

The duty of honouring God you perceive is exten- 
sive. Every member of our bodies and every faculty 
of our minds, must be enlisted in his service. The 
understanding must honour God by studying his nature 
and perfections as visible in creation, providence, and 
grace; the will must honour him by submitting to his 
will, universally and cordially: the affections must 
^ Rom. xii. i. '^ Rom. vi. 19. 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 83 

honour him by centering in him as their object. He 
must be loved and feared; in him we must rejoice, 
trust, and hope. 

This temper of the soul must characterize the whole 
life. All our actions must contemplate the honour of 
God as their ultimate end. 

3. The manner in zvhicJi this duty can he performed, 
is by the regenerating and sanctifying grace of God. 

The Holy Spirit who, in the economy of redemption 
is the spirit of Christ, converts the sinner by applying 
the blood of Christ to the heart and conscience, en- 
lightening the mind, and purifying the heart. Thus 
the darkness which obscures his understanding about 
the things pertaining to his salvation is dispelled ; and 
the wild misrule of the affections of his heart with the 
appetites of the body annihilated. "Old things are 
passed away; behold, all things are become new." ^ In 
this change, no additional faculties are created ; but 
those which belong to our intelligent nature are res- 
cued from the domination of sin, and placed under the 
guidance and power of the Holy Spirit. According 
to Christ's own words, he "reproves the world of sin, 
of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they 
believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to 
my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, be- 
cause the prince of this world is judged." ^ Such a 
reproof, where it is felt, and the whole life regulated 
by it, necessarily produces a complete renovation of a 
sinner from death unto life — from rebellion unto obe- 
dience — from apostacy to faith. The doctrine I know 
is considered fanatical, but it will stand the test of 
sober examination. Neither the superstitious notion, 
that the pouring of water in baptism on the subject, 
will regenerate a child of wrath ; nor the skeptical, I 
*2 Cor. V. 17.. ^John xvi. 8-11. 



8 \. NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

should rather say, the atheistic position, that an heir 
of the curse, with his carnal mind at enmity against 
God, can please him by his own works : does overturn 
or disprove the sober, deliberate, rational truth of the 
Son of God, which he unfolded to Nicodemus : "Marvel 
not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again." ^ In 
accordance with which, his apostle describes his fol- 
lowers as "being born again, not of corruptible seed, 
but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth 
and abideth for ever." ^ Without such regeneration 
and sanctification, no sinner can honour God, but, on 
the contrary, will continue hostile to his honour, and a 
rebel against his authority. 

III. God can be honoured in no other way, than ac- 
cording to his own directions, made knoiun to them by 
a special revelation. 

Such a revelation springs from his nature as Creator 
and Legislator, but especially as Redeemer. He could 
not make a rational creature lawless, but him subject 
to a law. This law was written on Adam's heart, and 
was natural to him. But the positive law, and after- 
wards the prediction of Messiah, were matters of pure 
revelation. The positive lazv, and the prediction of 
Messiah, unfold to us God's two covenants, of works 
and grace. All the information which we have on 
these subjects is contained in the Scriptures of the old 
and new Testaments. They furnish us with the only 
directions which God has made known to us concerning 
his will, or the way of honouring him. But here three 
questions present themselves to our attention. 

I. Are these Scriptures really the zvill of God, re- 
vealed to us for onr guidance and salvation f 

When the term Scriptures is used, I mean the books 
from Genesis to Revelation. It is true, that when God 
^ John iii. 7. ° I Peter i. 23. 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 85 

spoke the words of the text, but few of the canonical 
books of the Old Testament were known; yet the rest 
of them, with the whole of the New Testament, con- 
stitute what we have received as the Scriptures. The 
inquiry therefore is, do these books come down to us 
with sufficient evidence, that God inspired the writers, 
or is our reason the judge to determine what part or 
parts of their contents constitute his will ? 

To the first question, the answer is unhesitatingly 
given in the affirmative. After all the laborious inves- 
tigations of the subject, the testimony thus far is de- 
cidedly in favour of the received text.^ 

To the last, insuperable objections present them- 
selves; arising out of the diversity of views which ex- 
ists among those who reject the plenary inspiration of 
the Scriptures. In examining closely their pretensions, 
and the grounds on which these pretensions rest, I can 
find nothing of a uniform nature,^ and therefore noth- 
ing of a binding authority. They leave us in the state 
of Israel, when there was "no king, but every man did 
that which was right in his own eyes." ^ This com- 
pletely destroys the paramount power of God, and in- 
fringes his wisdom, as the supreme legislator of the 
rational creation. 

* The reader is referred to confined merely to what are 

Nolan's Integrity of the Greek considered essential doctrines — 

Vulgate ; Hale's Faith in the doctrines involving in them 

Holy Trinity ; Laurence's Criti- eternal issues. The question is 

cal Reflections on the Improved not about small matters, but 

Version ; Nares' Examination, those of the last importance, 

with Magee's Notices of the Is Christ Jehovah, or a mere 

same. After all that has been man? Is his sacrifice necessary 

written on the subject, to say for our salvation, or are our 

the least, the objections to cer- virtues and good works suffi- 

tain texts are of doubtful force, cient? If he is a mere man or 

and their abandonment by some subordinate God, Trinitarians 

orthodox persons, premature are idolaters. If he is Jehovah, 

and rash; particularly that of Antitrinitarians are atheists, 

I John V. 7. without God and without hope. 

" The uniformity meant, is ^ Judges xvii. 6. 



86 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

We praise Lycurgus and Solon, with other legis- 
lators, for furnishing their countrymen with a definite 
code of laws, but deny that such a code, equally definite, 
has been given by the supreme legislator, to his crea- 
tures and subjects. If the scriptures in their present 
form, resting on indestructible evidence, do not con- 
tain his will, as legislator, where is it to be found? 
Grant for a moment, that the human understanding is 
to determine, not the evidences, but the nature of this 
will, and what will be the consequence? "Jehovah, 
Jove, and Lord," will be the light in which the nature 
and claims of the eternal one, will be viewed and 
respected. Juggernaut, among the Hindoos ; the Grand 
Lama of Thibet; the Devil of the Africans, may be 
honoured as well as the Jehovah of the Scriptures. 
And hence, as there is no fixed or determinate will 
made known to us, none of our race can be punished 
eternally. The doctrine of universal salvation is the 
necessary result of the speculative opinions of those 
who reject the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. 
In all cases they who deny the atonement of Christ, 
have been compelled to league themselves with those 
who deny eternal punishment.^ 

2. How are zve to regard tJiese Scripturesf 
Assuredly as requiring our obedience both internally 
and externally. By them the understanding must be 
informed in all truth, the heart directed in its affec- 
tions, and the conduct regulated in all the relations of 
life. They are given to us as "profitable for doctrine, 
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous- 
ness ; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly 
furnished unto all good works." ^ Revealed to us "by 

^Th\s was the great paramount not die," said the Tempter, and 

consolation of Dr. Priestly ac- on his falsehood the Heresiarch 

cording to his own declaration depended for eternal happiness, 

on his dying bed. "Ye shall " 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17. 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 87 

inspiration," ^ they constitute in every respect the rule 
of our faith and obedience. In them, as a whole, is 
contained the will of God, for our present comfort and 
everlasting peace. From them alone, we are enabled 
to "give an answer to every man who asketli us a rea- 
son of the hope that is in us, with meekness and fear: 
having a good conscience." ^ Rejecting them as they 
are, we reject our compass in the wide ocean on which 
we are embarked; and are left in our contingencies, 
trials, duties, and hopes, to the gloominess, the despon- 
dency, the despair of uncertainty, as it respects the 
issues of the life zvhich nozu is, in its connexion with 
the life which is to come. Like the foundered mariner, 
we have nothing left us but the spars, the masts, the 
ropes of the deck from whence we have been cast with 
a power we can neither resist nor contravene, to con- 
tend with the buffetings of the mighty deep.^ 

3. Hozv are zve to act, zvhen a diversity of opinions 
about these Scriptures, accurst 

This question involves in it a number of important 
rules of interpretation, which time will not permit me 
to discuss at length on this occasion. A few will there- 
fore be merely introduced, and their claims upon our 
attention briefly unfolded. 

The first rule for the interpretation of the Scriptures, 
is drawn from God's paramount authority over us. 
He must always have the highest place in our estima- 

^ 2 Tim. iii. i6. Testament : therein are con- 
^ I Peter iii. 15, 16. tained the words of eternal life. 
' I take my leave, says Bishop It has God for its author, sal- 
Watson to Gibbon, with rec- vation for its end, and truth 
ommending to your notice, the without any mixture of error, 
advice which Mr. Locke gave for its matter." Would Locke 
to a young man who was de- have thus recommended these 
sirous of becoming acquainted writings, if he had thought of 
with the doctrines of the Chris- them as Priestly, Belsham, and 
tian religion. "Study the holy their associates? 
Scriptures, especially the New 



88 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

tion, for to glorify him is the chief end of our crea- 
tion. As you have heard, all government of every 
kind springs from him; he therefore, must necessarily 
take precedence of any, even the highest of his creatures. 
No interpretation of his will can be correct, which 
brings him down to our level, instead of raising us up 
to his perfection. "My thoughts," saith God by the 
prophet Isaiah, speaking of the covenant of his love, 
the sure mercies of David, "are not your thoughts, nei- 
ther are your ways, my ways, saith the Lord, for as the 
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways 
higher than your ways, and my thought than your 
thoughts." ^ In the collisions which different interpre- 
tations of his revealed will, have produced, between 
his rights as a sovereign, and ours as creatures, the 
apostle's words ought to guide us. "Let God be true, 
but every man a liar." ^ Such a conclusion indeed anni- 
hilates the pride of the human understanding, in its 
usurped power to determine what are the truths, con- 
tained in God's will ; but it provides, for the honour of 
him wdio gave us our understanding, and who has 
adapted his will to our intelligent nature, as well as 
our perishing condition. His honour is of more con- 
sequence than our pride ; for we are atoms in his crea- 
tion. He is all in all. 

The second rule for interpreting the Scriptures is 
drawn from their nature. They contain a revelation 
of divine grace, intended for the salvation, the guid- 
ance, and the happiness of mankind. As such, their 
contents cannot be considered a discovery of the human 
understanding, or a republication of what is called the 
religion of nature. Containing, therefore, a super- 
natural revelation, they require supernatural aid to un- 
derstand them. This aid, however, is not contradictory 
' Isaiah, Iv. 8, 9. ^ Rom. iii. 4. 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 89 

to our reason; though far above its utmost powers. 
The province of reason is to determine the evidences 
which substantiate this revelation. The supernatural 
aid is requisite, to direct the reason of those, who 
are satisfied about its evidences. If these evidences 
are doubtful, we are as rational in rejecting tJie 
zvhole, as pai'ts of its contents; because we have no 
more authority for one of its doctrines than another, 
and no warrant to respect one book in the Bible, more 
tJian another.^ 

The third rule is drawn from the existing character 
of man. This is, from the testimony of the heathen 
themselves of the most unfavourable kind, and there- 
fore requiring divine interposition in his behalf. In 
all their darkness, they deeply felt their guilt, pollu- 
tion, and helplessness. They had not the hardihood 
of impudence to maintain that there was more goodness 
among men, than evil — more virtue than vice. They 
KNEW BETTER ! and the Bible gives us the clearest and 
fullest information on the subject that we can desire. 
Nothing which man can do for himself, will answer. 
He must have help from God, suited not only to his 
intelligent, but to his perishing condition. Supernatu- 
ral aid he must have, in his use of the Scriptures, or 

^ Dr. Priestly charges Paul of Canaan, in Joshua, fictitious 

with being an inconclusive rea- — the books of Samuel full of 

soner ; his epistles, therefore, falsehoods — the Psalms contain 

can be no part of the Bible. no prophecies. Semler, on 2 

Mr. Evanson says, "the evan- Pet. i. 21, says, that the pro- 

gelical histories contain gross phets have delivered the off- 

and irreconcilable contradic- spring of their OAvn brains, as 

tions — " they of course consti- divine revelations. A recent 

tute no part of the Bible. Mr. author has elaborately endea- 

Belsham charges John, in his vored to prove that Christ lived 

gospel, with using metaphors 25 years after his resurrection ; 

"of the most obscure and offen- and that what the evangelists 

sive kind." Damm, a German relate as his ascension, was 

Socinian, says, the history of nothing more than his being 

the fall is a fable — the conquest lost in a fog ! ! ! 



90 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

he cannot escape the ruins of his apostacy and re- 
bellion. 

The fourth rule arises out of man's responsibility, as 
a creature to his Creator, and as a subject to his Sov- 
ereign. As the Creator and Sovereign has made known 
his will to him, he cannot plead ignorance. Nor can 
he plead that this will requires any thing unreasonable, 
unrighteous, or unhol}^ As God could not make a 
rational being except under a law, and as he was 
pleased to convert that law into a covenant that he 
might gratuitously rew^ard obedience; so a rational 
being cannot but construe his revealed will so as to vin- 
dicate or establish the authority of God, and the sub- 
ordination of man. 

Secondly. / pass on to the application of the preced- 
ing principles, to the Anniversary zvJiich has convened 
its together. 

In this application I stand before you as a minister 
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. My opinions of the 
nature of that Gospel are known, for I have never con- 
cealed them. It would little comport with the honesty 
and integrity of ministerial character, to sacrifice truth, 
for what I consider to be error. The case of Eli, whose 
family, as you have heard, were degraded, is a warning 
to me and to all ministers of religion; and the case of 
Israel who lost the ark of God, by their connivance at 
the conduct of their ungodly priests and rulers, fur- 
nishes sufficiently clear landmarks, as it respects your 
duty. Christian courtesy and Christian charity, in the 
Scriptural meaning, never can be observed at the ex- 
pense of Christian honesty — an honesty which your 
fathers considered entirely the reverse of a profession 
"to be ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge 
of the truth." Your fathers were men of whom the 
world was not worthy. They understood their civil 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 91 

and religious rights, with a clearness of perception and 
correctness of view superior to the majority of their 
countrymen, and surpassed by few, if any, of the protes- 
tants of their day. 

At the time when they appeared on the theatre of 
action, "the spell by which the papal hierarchy had 
bound the multitude for ages, was dissolved. To this 
important revolution, as you well know, the Christian 
world is indebted for civil liberty, that inestimable 
temporal blessing; the emancipation of the mind from 
subjection to every restraint but that which common 
sense and truth impose; the diffusion of knowledge 
among all classes of men, the poor as well as the rich, 
subjects as well as rulers; the enlargement of the sphere 
of knowledge in its different branches by new discov- 
eries ; the melioration of the morals of society, and the 
condition of individuals; the excitement given to in- 
genuity and industry in the various departments of life, 
by securing the possession of their rewards; and, in fine, 
all that ease, comfort, decorum, polish, order, and civili- 
zation, which make it a model to the rest of the world." 

These consequences were unfolding rapidly in the 
different protestant nations, when in England they were 
arrested by the haughty and imperious Elizabeth, whose 
accession to the throne was hailed by a people who had 
groaned and agonized under her bloody predecessor.^ 
The spirit of inquiry which the Reformation has pro- 
duced, was extending itself to matters of state and of 
the church, as well as to the smaller details of private 
life. Men who had thrown off the despotism of super- 
stition, destructive equally of political and religious lib- 
erty, could not quietly submit to the despotism of Eliza- 

' Miss Aiken's history of illustrating the character and 
Elizabeth's time, &c., furnishes conduct of this Queen, 
curious and interesting facts, 



92 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

beth. Conscious that the Reformation was not com- 
plete, they were eager to proceed in the good work. 
This was i>articularly the case with a majority of the 
exiles, who had been entertained with great humanity 
by the refonned states of Ci^rmany, Switzerland, and 
Geneva: the magistrates enfranchizing them, and ap- 
pointing churches for their public worship.^ They de- 
sired a more thorough reformation, and greater con- 
formity to the foreign churches, but they failed. The 
arguments of Elizabeth and her courtly prelates to en- 
force uniformity in religion, were tines, confiscations, 
imprisonments, and all manner of hardships. The 
Puritans^ as they beg-an to be called in this reigii, re- 
monstrated against this infringement of the rights of 
conscience. Many of the matters required were indif- 
ferent : as the reception of them, however, involved the 
right of the crown to lord it over conscience, they op- 
posed; but in vain. The history of this period is so 
familiar to all as to need no enlargement. 

Aly object in furnishing these notices is to press upon 
your attention the principles which influenced these real 
patriots — these friends of liberty in the church and the 
state, among whom your ancestors held so conspicuous 
a station. They have been unfolded to you and illus- 
trated in the explanation of God's declaration, "them 
that honour me I will honour, and they that despise 
me shall be lightly esteemed." They could not sub- 
mit to the right which the throne claimed of regulating 
the consciences of subjects in matters of religion; nor 
could they acquiesce in the absurd doctrine of "passive 

* XeaVs Histon^ of the Puri- Frankfort." Phoenix. 2d vol. 

tans, edited by Touhiiin. Strx-pe refers to this work as 

" This name originated at giving authentic information. 

Frankfort, where the division Str\-pe"s Annals, vol. i., 3d edit., 

of the English exiles com- chap. 7. p. 103, 104, 
menced. See "The Troubles of 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 93 

obedience and non-resistance," pertinaciously cherished 
by the infatuated Stuarts. 

Whence did they derive this noble spirit of opposi- 
tion to political and religious despotism — a spirit which 
has immortalized them, and constrained Hume himself 
to acknowledge that ''the precious spark of liberty had 
been kindled and was preserved by the Puritans alone ; 
and it was to this sect that the English owe the whole 
freedom of their constitution ?" From the Bible. "The 
Bible, the Bible is the religion of protestants," ex- 
claimed the celebrated Chillingworth. 

Remarkable was the charge given by the venerable 
Robinson to the Pilgrims of New-England. ''I be- 
seech you remember, it is an article of your church 
covenant, that you be ready to receive whatever truth 
shall be made known to you from the zuritten word of 
God." ^ This was their guide, their counsellor, the 
man of their heart. Having exercised their under- 
standings in examining the evidences of its authenti- 
city and divinity, they submitted them to its contents. 
With such views of its authority, and such obedience to 
its directions, they bid farewell, to the land which had 
given them a home — (when their unnatural country 
left them no alternative but to suffer or emigrate), and 
to their companions, with their beloved pastor. 

Methinks I see the interesting group assembled on 
the shore of Delfthaven. On the countenances of all, 
anxiety and sorrow are depicted. Every one has his 
eye fixed on the man of God — the father of the flock. 
Kneeling down in the midst of them, he commends 
them to God and to the word of his grace. Prayer 
being ended, like the elders of Ephesus when they 
parted with Paul, the emigrants hang upon his neck, 
and weep, sorrowing at their separation, not knowing 
' Neal's hist, and Brooks's Lives of the Puritans. 



94 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

but that they would see his face no more. They part, 
never to meet in this world. The ashes of their pastor 
rest in Leyden, and theirs in Massachusetts. The wide 
ocean rolls between their earthly remains — but their 
spirits are with God. 

Descendants of the Pilgritns! venerate the memory 
of your fathers. They were noble men, though de- 
spised by the slaves of the crown and the supporters of 
the hierarchy. The spirit, which their companions 
who could not emigrate, possessed, not long after their 
departure, broke forth with power, and accomplished 
a revolution then unexampled in English history — a 
revolution which placed on the seat of government a 
man, than whom ancient or modern times has furnished 
but few equals, and no superiors. To Oliver Cromzvell, 
a Puritan, England is indebted for her maritime glory. 
And in his character and conduct, I do not hesitate to 
say, he furnished a striking contrast to the Royal Stu- 
arts. He honoured God publicly in his official station, 
however dubious his personal religion, or censurable 
his political ambition may have been. During his gov- 
ernment, vice and irreligion were discountenanced in 
the most decided manner, whilst the open manifesta- 
tion of the fear of the Lord was encouraged and pa- 
tronized. The Royal Stuarts, on the contrary, "de- 
spised God," in the scriptural sense, substituting the 
traditions and will-worship of men, in the place of his 
truth and directions ; and counting the honour of kings 
of more consequence than the honour of God. Remem- 
ber their "conduct and fate in your political relations, 
and honour the God of your fathers. They were hon- 
oured by him, in giving them a name, and enabling 
them in this western world to lay the foundation of a 
growing nation. In the Eastern States of our Repub- 
lic, the fruits of their political sagacity grafted on their 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 95 

religious principles appear. And if there be in these 
fruits any thing worthy, commendable, and honourable, 
it springs from the fact that your fathers honoured 
God. Your sin in not so doing will be greater, inas- 
much as you enjoy full, entire, and perfect liberty of 
conscience, with none to molest you, or make you 
afraid.^ 

In the spirit which these Puritans possessed, there 
was a manliness and honesty; a fortitude and chastity 
rarely witnessed. It is true they are charged with hy- 
pocrisy. But unless their profession was contradicted 
by their works, the charge is groundless. They abounded 
in the duties of religion, and have never yet been con- 
victed of acknowledged violations of the duties of 
morality. The charge, unfortunately for its credibility 
or its truth, was first brought against them by the 
friends of the throne and the hierarchy — the cavaliers, 
as distinguished from the round heads, who openly and 
unblushingly indulged themselves in immoralities, as 
well as irreligious acts. They have also been charged 
with austerity, as being the bitter enemies of social en- 
joyments ; but the authentic histories of their day, prove 
that they were as much the friends of the same, as their 
opponents, so far as real religion would allow.^ They 

^ The cry of persecution in a mandments of men which are 
country like this, under its pres- in any thing contrary to his 
ent government, is really laugh- word, or beside it in matters of 
able, excepting when liberal and faith and worship. So that to 
rational Christians act, as they believe such doctrines, or to 
did in Dorchester, Massachu- obey such commandments, out 
setts, towards the late Mr. of conscience, is to betray true 
Huntington, in an exchange liberty of conscience ; and the 
with Mr. Codman. The doc- requiring of an implicit faith, 
trine of liberty of conscience is and an absolute and blind obe- 
well explained in the confes- dience, is to destroy liberty of 
sion of faith of the Presbyte- conscience and reason also." 
rian Church, chap. xx. sect. 2. — ^ Mrs. Hutchinson's life of 
"God alone is Lord of the con- her husband, Edinburgh Re- 
science, and hath left it free view, vol. xiii. Art. i. Crom- 
from the doctrines and com- well's Life of the Protector. 



96 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

could not indeed laugh and sing, drink and revel, as 
the others, because the fear of the Lord forbade. Be- 
fore they obtained the ascendency, it was natural for 
them to manifest dejection of spirits and sadness of 
heart, for they were under the murderous grasp of 
archbishop Laud,^ and his deluded sovereign Charles I. 
To the taunts of their adversaries on this subject, they 
could with justness reply, as the captive Jews did to 
the Pagan Babylonians who required of them mirth, 
saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall 
we sing the Lord's song in a strange land ?" ^ 

Charges not unlike this have been brought against 
your ancestors after their settlement in this country; 
but in the estimate of human character, according to 
the Bible, they are of small concern. Their desire was 
to think on and perform "whatsoever things are true, 
whatsoever things are honest, w^hatsoever things are 
just, wdiatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report." ^ 
Their faults, which are unfolded in the objections 
against them, all originated in their profound regard 
for the Bible. They considered it to be a book contain- 
ing directions for mankind in every relation of life. 

In the Retrospective Review, suffer perpetual imprisonment, 

vol. iv. Part 2, Art. i. Howell's pulled off his hat. and holding 

Familiar Letters, the reader can up his hands. GAVE THANKS 

see the account of the religious TO GOD. WHO HAD GIVEN 

observances of one who, though HIM THE VICTORY OVER 

as the writer states, was not an HIS ENEMIES. Brooks, 

ultra-royalist, was still an anti- Lives of the Puritans, vol. ii. 

commonwealth man, and a p. 431, who quotes Rushworth's 

thorough churchman. Collect, vol. xi. p. 56, 57. Lud- 

^ Laud, after Leighton, the low's Letter, p. 22, 23. Who 

father of archbishop Leighton, could suppose after this, that 

at his instigation, was sen- High-Churchmen would be 

tenced to have his ears cut, his hardy enough to apologize for 

nose slit, to be branded in the Laud, and condemn Calvin, in 

face, to stand in the pillory, to the case of Servetus? 

be whipped at a post, to pay " Psal. cxxxvii. I, 4. 

ten thousand pounds, and to ' Phil. iv. 8. 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 97 

From it they derived their reverence for God, and their 
determined resolution to honour him in the way of his 
appointment. 

Descendants of the Pilgrims! imitate their love of 
the Bible. In it they found the salvation of their souls, 
viz., redemption through the blood of Christ. This 
was the charm which operated upon their minds and 
hearts, and produced such sacrifices of comfort and 
ease. None but Christ — none but Christ — was the 
motto of their Christian heraldry ; and the language of 
their lives, as well as their hearts, was, ''I am crucified 
with Christ : nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me : and the life which I now live in the flesh I 
live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and 
gave himself for me." ^ 

I have said that redemption by Christ was the charm 
which made the Bible so precious to them, and it is this 
alone which can make it interesting to any of our fallen 
race. Without this, there is a want of meaning in the 
Levitical institutions; obscurity, impervious to light, in 
the prophecies ; and such a degradation of the character 
and ofiice of Christ, as to make him of no more impor- 
tance than Moses or any other of the prophets of God. 
Without this, there is nothing to excite our hopes or 
fears ; nothing suited to our existing character and con- 
dition ; nothing to produce in any person a deep, solemn, 
and controlling sense of responsibility to Jehovah. Let 
then the Bible be to you, as it was to them, your guide 
— your directory. And recollect that their Bible was 
not "an improved version," ^ made by sectarian men, 

^ Gal. ii. 20. See the Cam- and leave no doubt about their 

bridge Platform, drawn up in faith. 

1649, in Mather's Magnalia, fol. " The improved version of the 

b. 5. p. 23, and the Saybrook New Testament, upon the basis 

Platform, in 1703. These plat- of Archbishop Newcome's new 

forms were the confessions of translation, attributed to Bel- 

the churches in New-England, sham, and republished in Bos- 



98 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

from an examination of codices and printed texts, re- 
plete with conjectural emendations/ which requires 
the knowledge of the learned languages to ascertain its 
correctness : but the Scriptures of the Old and New Tes- 
taments as they were delivered to the churches by the 
evangelists and apostles of our Lord, faithfully trans- 
lated, which require merely common sense and an hon- 
est heart to understand, and approve themselves to 
the experience of every renewed sinner. 

Descendants of tJie Pilgrims! your fathers honoured 
the God of the Scriptures, Jehovah, Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost. With child-like simplicity, and ardent 
gratitude, they owned Jesus of Nazareth to be Jehovah, 
their righteousness and strength. To him they con- 
fided their souls and bodies for time and eternity, as 
knowing him in wdiom they believed, and being per- 
suaded that he was able to keep that which was com- 
mitted to him against that day. Lie was all their sal- 
vation and all their desire. You justly glory in their 
love of civil and religious liberty; but seek rather to 
glory in the cross of Christ, by which they were cruci- 
fied unto the world, and the w'orld unto them. It was 
the application of his blood to the heart that gave them 
the spirit of martyrdom. Remember that he will come 
a second time to judge the quick and the dead. Before 
his awful bar, you with them must stand to give in 
your account. They have left you a precious legacy: 
not merely a goodly land — nor civil liberty — but the 
Bible! You are the posterity of those who watered 
the soil on which they sojourned, with tears shed in 

ton. For the honesty, as it re- partial and sincere inquirers 

spects Newcome's name, and after truth must be particularly 

truth, as it respects the text, upon their guard against what 

see Magee, Hales, Nares, Lau- is called the natural significa- 

rence, &-c. tion of words and phrases." 

' One of Belsham's canons to Cal. Enq. p. 4, 5. 
interpret Scripture is this : "Im- 



JOHN BRODERICK ROMEYN 99 

wrestling with God for their children and children's 
children. For this Bible and those prayers you are an- 
swerable. If you have rejected, perverted, or dis- 
obeyed the first — the last will operate to your increased 
condemnation. 

What a meeting will that be! A meeting between 
the fathers of New-England and their descendants. 
No religion will sustain you then but that which sup- 
ported and comforted them in their trials. If you are 
not united to that Lord Jesus who was the God of their 
salvation, you perish for ever in the final catastrophe 
of the universe. 

Descendants of the Pilgrims of N ezv-England ! re- 
ceive this discourse as an affectionate tribute to their 
memory, and an honest admonition for your benefit, 
from a descendant of those Hollanders among whom 
they sojourned, and from whose shores they emigrated. 
I have done. Amen. 



L.of 



"THE MEMORY OF THE JUST IS 
BLESSED " 

PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 
(1794- I 824.) 

The brief records of Mr. Whelpley that have come down to us 
through three quarters of a century hold the ever fresh in- 
terest of real life. One instinctively fills in the bare outlines 
of hard struggle, sudden success and brief enjoyment. One 
sees a youth hardly more than a child, teaching to eke out his 
scanty means for study, till between studying and teaching his 
education is gained and he is licensed to preach. One feels 
his mingled elation and distrust when his first call comes, not 
from some country parish, but from the First Presbyterian 
Church of New York, and one watches eagerly those ten years 
of labor, when he is still training himself for his task ; till, 
at thirty, he passes beyond the range of slow human vision. 
Mr. Whelpley was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the 
son of a schoolmaster who could not have been in easy cir- 
cumstances, since he seems to have been almost the only in- 
structor of the future minister, and the son, in turn, early 
became his father's only assistant. The young preacher is de- 
scribed as remarkably graceful in bearing and attractive in 
person. Near the commencement of his ministry he preached 
in the college chapel at Yale, and the students, learning that 
the fascinating stranger was to be at one of the city churches 
in the evening, flocked thither. One present on the occasion 
says, "I never saw the like of it. It seemed to me, as I came 
across the Common, as though the young people were literally 
dancing in admiration of the sermon." These were the days 
when the thought of the scholar was clothed in elegant rhet- 
oric, but under the influence of the old master, his father, 
decorations were cut more and more ruthlessly till little indeed 
of such a tendency can be found in the severe English of the 
sermon delivered at the celebration of this society two years 
before his death. 



DISCOURSE 



HAD I been willing to forget that I and my fathers 
claim a share in the birthright blessings of the 
Pilgrims' God, I should have declined the honour now 
conferred upon me by you, friends and brethren of the 
New England Society : for there are those who might 
better sustain a public feeling so deep and expansive 
as that which welcomes this anniversary. But in the 
flush of a sentiment you well understand, and which 
carried me back to the bosoms and the graves of five 
generations, I consented to meet you this evening, and 
be the minister of your thank-offerings and prayers to 
the God of the Pilgrims. And though that sentiment 
has been chastened and subdued into fear by reflection 
upon the duty before me — upon the few broken hours 
I have been able to devote to it — and the difficulty of 
gathering into a small compass the parts of a history 
that might easily exhaust the finest and boldest minds 
of our country, I cannot now be silent: the period has 
arrived, and I must speak, though it be but in feeble 
imitation of the master spirits of that age, when Chris- 
tian heroism planted these new empires, and Christian 
eloquence gave them to immortality. You will bear 
with me then for the hour ; and require no further apol- 
ogy for an effort to which little dishonour can be at- 
tached, for the very attempt is praiseworthy. 

Were we assembled, my friends, for any purpose in- 

103 



104 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

consistent with the sacred duties of this da)^ and of this 
place; were it our wish to take advantage of an inter- 
esting era for the excitement of local prejudice, or the 
widening of political distinctions among those who by 
birth or by adoption have an equal right to the paternal 
inheritance: were it our desire to foster a pride of an- 
cestry, that loves the emptiness of names more than the 
virtues of piety and noble deeds, or to swell the note of 
exultation into an apotheosis of men whose ambition it 
was, not to be "gods," but the ser^-ants of God, my 
heart might well refuse its sympathy and my tongue its 
office: for "with such sacrifices the Lord is not well 
pleased." Such motives would be more appropriate 
where the most debased of human passions are allowed 
to reign, and where idolatry is not felt to be a crime. 
The emotions we now indulge should not lose in purity, 
in power, in elevation, by the intrusion of any thing 
unhallowed ; but should gain, as in the perceptions of 
the wise and the good they do greatly gain from the 
holy interest that is thrown around them by the still- 
ness of a Sabbath evening, and the sacredness of the 
house of God. 

Here, then, in the calmness of reflection, and while 
the spirit of prayer is waiting to realize the grace of 
heaven, and while we bring our souls into one deep and 
fervent expression of gratitude and praise, that God 
has remembered mercy for the children of those that 
loved him unto the fourth and sixth generation — here 
we are permitted to comply so far with the original at- 
tachments and sympathies of nature, as to" dwell upon 
the memory of those, who, under God, were the authors 
of our present privilege, and of our country's glory. 
We are permitted, did I say? — We are required, by 
every feeling of patriotism; by every circumstance of 
social blessing ; by our love of independence and peace ; 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 105 

by our zeal for intellectual and moral improvement; 
above all, by every sentiment of piety and gratitude to 
the Lord of providence and grace : we are required to 
call to mind those wise and good men who, in the spirit 
of Moses and of Joshua, delivered our fathers from the 
tyrannous yoke, and planted them in the wilderness, 
and divided to them the rich and unalienable heritage 
that has descended to us — an heritage, not of gold, or 
lands, or titles, but of social happiness, and civil inde- 
pendence, and religious freedom. This is the inherit- 
ance, and under the guardianship of the same Provi- 
dence that has hitherto saved it from profanation, this 
shall for ever be the inheritance of the Pilgrims' sons ! 



Let this then be our theme : 

THE MEMORY OF THE JUST IS BLESSED. 
Prov. chap. x. ver. 7. 

It has been sanctioned by the Spirit of Inspiration, 
and it covers the design of this anniversary. 

The antithesis of this proverb is, "bitt the name of 
the zvickcd shall rot:" and it is not only a kind of pro- 
phecy respecting what shall be under a righteous Provi- 
dence, but implies also an obligation upon us to honour 
the memory of those only "to whom honour is due." 
While then we condemn to oblivion the names and the 
actions of all those who, instead of being the benefac- 
tors of their race, have been the "scourges of God and 
the terror of men;" while we refuse a memorial to 
those who have only fought battles, and sold the lives 
of men, and rolled many garments in blood — who have 
wrought the iron bands of despotism, or increased the 
aggregate of human misery, or put out the lights of 



io6 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

science and religion, in order to be themselves the rulers 
of the darkness; while we think it shame to give the 
semblance of hallowed feeling to the memory of men — 
however much they may have been seen and felt in the 
world's affairs — who have had neither goodness nor 
greatness enough to save their name from perishing,, 
and their destiny from heaven's curse, — it becomes us 
to cherish the idea of those who have been "the just," 
the good, the only great, "the excellent of the earth;" 
and we will gladly, for it is fit and beautiful before the 
face of heaven, to recall their names and memorize their 
deeds. We will speak of them in the solemn assembly ; 
we will tell our children what they were, and what they 
did; we will pursue their bright image till it leads us 
back again through all the scenes of their labour and 
suffering, and ascends to heaven from the places of 
their last repose; we will still dwell upon their charac- 
ter, their spirit, their actions, their example, and give 
them the embalming of our soul's affections, and they 
shall live and be immortal, for they are worthy. 

"The memory of the just is blessed." It has been 
so, and it shall always be so, not on earth only, but in 
heaven. When I think of the Plymouth Pilgrims, and 
imagine myself standing upon the rock where they first 
rested from their wanderings, and look abroad upon 
this wide and now populous region, it occurs to me, is 
there one of these favoured multitudes incapable of ap- 
preciating the benefits derived to himself and the world 
from the fact that they have lived? 'Tis but a little 
while, and all these fair lands were "a waste howling 
wilderness;" the wild beast roamed in the unbroken 
forest, and none were found but the habitations of cru- 
elty and savageness. But now we see a great and ex- 
tending empire ; the wilderness with its barbarous race, 
has melted away; and there remain the crowded cities, 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 107 

the numberless villages, the hamlets, and gardens, and 
fields, and woodlands of a mighty people — a nation, 
more happy, more intelligent, more free, more pious 
than any upon earth, if social felicity, and general in- 
telligence, and the most perfect liberty, and the divine 
influence of Christianity, can give such pre-eminence. 
And to whom, under the providence of Him, who 
"increaseth the nations and destroyeth them," do we 
owe this astonishing change? Chiefly to the Plymouth 
Pilgriuis. Not because they were the first European 
colony that was established in Northern America, for 
they were not : Virginia, and the Carolinas, and Can- 
ada, being already occupied, they could only claim the 
first settlement of what has since been called New- 
England proper. Nor was it because they came with 
such wealth, and numbers, and chartered privilege, as 
to give them an immediate and determinate influence 
upon the condition and fortunes of this section of the 
new world : for they were impoverished, and had nearly 
exhausted their resources in equipments for the voy- 
age; they were feeble in numbers, amounting at their 
landing to only forty-one heads of families and one 
hundred souls, and of that number half were buried 
before the naked forests, upon which their eyes first 
rested, were clothed in verdure; and they had no pat- 
ent privilege that gave them a right even to the narrow 
houses of their dead. But, my friends, we owe this 
surprising change to these Pilgrims — and we rejoice 
to tell it to the world — because they were, in the strict- 
est sense, a religious community. To this we are 
doubtless to ascribe it, that they were not only so fa- 
voured of Providence in the singular combination of 
circumstances leading to their settlement, but also that 
they came at once to exert such a decided influence 
upon the destinies of New-England. Religion was 



io8 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

their grand characteristic ; the presiding motive of their 
original gathering in Britain — of their location at Ply- 
month — and of their subsequent polity, which has at 
length been moulded into a prodigious engine of civil 
and religious prosperity. In this respect they were 
singular among all the settlements that were made, be- 
fore or since, upon the American shores. It was their 
sacred appointment to bear the ark of the Lord over 
the mighty waters, and to find it a resting place "in the 
fields of the wood" — in a land, over which the dark- 
ness of centuries had hung ; and while other adventurers 
were seeking the gold of the Mexicans, or the patents 
of Virginia, or the traffic of the northern coast, it was 
their first ambition to set up a tabernacle at "Shiloh," 
and worship God in the conscious liberty of his eman- 
cipated sons ! In this respect, too, we may justly say, 
they were singular among all the colonies that have 
been planted in the earth, since the dispersion from 
Shinar. If an exception be made, it can only be in 
favour of that chosen, and heaven-directed people, who 
were rescued from Egyptian bondage, and guided by 
the Shekinah through the sea and through the wil- 
derness, till their settlement in the promised land. It 
was their plea with the obdurate Pharaoh, "let us 
go three days journey into the wilderness, that we 
may sacrifice unto the Lord our God." Sometimes 
there has been the semblance of religious motive min- 
gling with the circumstances, that have excited the 
spirit of emigration in earlier and later times. We are 
told, for example, of colonies from Egypt, that escaped 
from the oppression of the Pharaohs ; of colonies from 
Phenicia, that "fled from the face of Joshua, the son 
of Nun;" of colonies from Greece, that were planted 
in obedience to the Delphic oracle; of colonies from 
Rome, that were animated by the prophecies of the 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 109 

sybil, and guided by the raven's flight ; and we are told 
also of colonies from Europe, that in later times have 
embarked under the blessing of the Vatican, to convert 
the millions of Asia and the millions of America: but 
it is easy to see, how, under all this pretence, the spirit 
of discovery, urged on by domestic oppression, carried 
abroad the Egyptian in as many directions as were 
given him by the mouths of the Nile — how the tempta- 
tions of commercial enterprise led the Phenicians to the 
site of Carthage, and beyond the pillars of Hercules — 
how the narrow limits of Attica and the Peloponnesus 
compelled the Greeks to spread themselves abroad upon 
the inviting borders of Asia and Europe — how the love 
of dominion and military glory carried the Roman 
eagle through the breadth of the ancient world — and 
how, in more recent periods, the spirit of Loyola or of 
Cortez has extended the arm of a tyrant or a bigot over 
countries, that have been discovered and colonized only 
to be depopulated or enslaved. In no instance, re- 
corded on the page of history, saving the one already 
excepted, do we find the same presiding motive that ac- 
tuated the Plymouth Pilgrims. They stand alone, and 
were, for a season, to this western hemisphere, "as a 
light shining in a dark place, until the day dawned, and 
the day-star arose." 

Now we are often told, not only of the singular 
providences that marked their history, but also that 
''the settlement of the Plymouth Colony was so peculiar 
in its causes and character, and has been, and must still 
be followed by such consequences as to give it a high 
claim to lasting commemoration." But we are not 
always told wherein they were so peculiar as to place 
them at such a distance of regard from other establish- 
ments of a similar kind. At least, tlie influence of re- 
ligion, as their absorbing, moving principle, and as 



no NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

affecting so deeply, as it doubtless has, the present char- 
acter and condition of their descendants, is not always 
suflkiently allowed. I make this remark, not as a 
criticism upon the views of some who have discussed 
this topic before me, but rather as an introduction to 
the view I shall now endeavour to present of the origin 
and conduct of the Plymouth colony; and I do it for 
the sufficient reason, that "the memory of the just is 
blessed," chiefly because of the piety which adorns their 
character, and of the direct influence of that piety in 
determining the character and condition of their pos- 
terity. 

I would speak of fJie iiifliienee of religion upon the 
eliaraeter aiui conduct of tlie PJyuioutli Pilgrifus, and 
inquire hozc tJuit influence has resulted in the subse- 
quent and present condition of New-Enghmd. Pre- 
mising, that I have not been able to collect and con- 
dense in a historical view the multitude of facts, that 
should come into the illustration of this subject, — 
partly through want of time for the necessar}- research, 
and partly through ignorance of the minute details of a 
history which ought to be familiar to our children, but 
wdiich lies in such old or scattered fragments, that it can 
scarcely be said to have been written. The most that 
can be done now, will be to alhule to some of the lead- 
ing events in the rise and fortunes of these interesting 
colonists; and in this attempt, it will be as much as I 
can hope for. to avoid the danger of suffering in- 
distinct recollections to take the place of historical 
truth. 

There are three points of obseii'ation at which we 
mav view these Pilgrims, in order to judge of the influ- 
ence of religion upon their character and conduct. 
These points are distinguished, in respect of time, as 
days of united and public prayer; and in respect of im- 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY iii 

portance, by events so striking and decisive as to form 
the leading chapters of their history. 

The first point of observation wih carry us back to 
that day when these Pilgrims were assembled at Ley- 
den, by their venerable pastor, Mr. Robinson, to deter- 
mine the grand question, whether they should embark 
for America. It was a day of fasting and prayer. 
And it was spent, not as colonists usually spend their 
day of preparation, in reflecting upon their situation 
and prospects — upon the fires of persecution, that were 
still burning in England — upon the dangers to which 
they and their children were exposed in Holland — ■ 
upon the hazards of the experiment before them — and 
in bowing the knee to the Lord their God. The re- 
vered Brewster was there; and the noble Carver, and 
Bradford, and Standish, and a hundred others, of a 
spirit chastened by the faith of Him, who walked upon 
the waters, and roused by the conviction of right and 
of duty to the daring of an enterprise that needed only 
a conscience void of offence, and sought only the pat- 
ronage of heaven. Twelve years had they already lived 
exiles from their native land, having been driven out 
by the proscriptions of a bloody prelate and an arbi- 
trary king; and now they must be exiled again from 
the country of their adoption, and find a home some- 
where beyond the Atlantic's waste, among savages, or 
in the solitudes of an unknown world. While they 
thus fasted and prayed, they remembered how peace- 
fully they might have enjoyed their homes and their 
sanctuary, in the land of their birth, and the image of 
the venerable Clifton was before them; — they remem- 
bered how they had been extremely harassed and torn 
asunder, and some cast into prison, and some put to 
death by the agents and ministers of ecclesiastical tyr- 
anny; — they remembered that dreadful night, when 



112 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

on the bleak and desolate shore of Lincolnshire they 
met to sever the ties that bound them to their beloved 
England; and how the houseless multitude, pierced 
with cold — men, women, and children clung together, 
and felt more willing to brave the horrors of a mid- 
night tempest on the German Ocean, than turn to meet 
the relentless bigotry that pursued their flight; — they 
remembered, too, how they had been oppressed and 
afflicted during their residence in Holland; how diffi- 
cult it was for them and their fellow-sufferers to enjoy 
a secure asylum there — many being discouraged from 
joining them, because of the restrictions and hardships 
that awaited their exile, and many being induced to 
return, because they "preferred the prisons of England 
to the liberty of Holland with these afflictions :" they 
were alarmed lest the cause of religion should die 
among their posterity, for it was daily suffering from 
the prevailing licentiousness of the continent; and in 
the true spirit of primitive evangelism, they had "an 
inward zeal and great hope of laying some foundation, 
or making way for propagating the kingdom of Christ 
to the remote ends of the earth." "They were troubled 
on every side, yet not distressed ; perplexed, but not in 
despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but 
not destroyed." 

Further to illustrate the leading motive of these Pil- 
grims, we have only to look at their assemblage on that 
day which was the crisis of their fortunes, because their 
lots were cast for America. They were a singular col- 
lection of people, thrown together by the same external 
causes from various parts of the three kingdoms, not 
governed by the common motives of interest or ambi- 
tion that associate men for a distant enterprise or mul- 
tiply recruits for a foreign service, and animated by 
the same spirit — a spirit bold, but not presumptuous; 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 113 

subdued, but ready to act ; distrusting its own firmness, 
but at the same time feeling and obeying a divine con- 
trol. They were not the refuse of society, but men 
of strong intelligence, and proved integrity, who under- 
stood well, and were determined, at the hazard of mar- 
tyrdom, or a burial in the ocean, to maintain the rights 
of conscience and the religion of Jesus Christ. They 
were not — like most adventurers upon a new world — 
men of doubtful character and loose principles, but of 
deep and ardent piety ; insomuch, that we are told every 
step of their proceeding was marked by the most sol- 
emn and unanimous appeal to the grace and guidance 
of God — that they encouraged only the virtuous to 
unite with or follow them — and that they would not 
allow an individual, not even a servant to embark with 
them, who was not an humble and approved disciple 
of Christ. In fine, they were not men of separate in- 
terests, associated by avarice or necessity, while each 
was planning selfish schemes, and dreaming over the 
wealth, and the lands, and the aggrandizement of an- 
other Utopia, for they felt but one absorbing interest — 
that the religion of Jesus Christ might be preserved 
immaculate, and its blessing and glory rest upon them- 
selves and their offspring; and, accordingly, like the 
first disciples, they sold their possessions; the rich and 
the poor threw every thing into one treasury, and "they 
had all things in common." 

Now there can be but one answer to the inquiry, 
under what leading influence did these men act? — But 
for the love of Christ, and the rights of conscience, they 
had never thought of building a sanctuary in a foreign 
land ; they would have remained at home, and esteemed 
it no sinful compromise to honour the surplice, or kneel 
at the sacrament, or wink at the profanation of the Sab- 
bath; they would willingly have cowered beneath the 



114 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

high tones of mitred authority, and been content, as 
the end ahke of their troubles and enjoyments, to be 
"gathered to their fathers." It was not that they were 
opposed to the reHgious estabhshments of Britain, for 
they honoured and loved them; and before and after 
their emigration repeatedly sued for their protection 
and prayers : — it was not that they were hostile in their 
feelings or principles to the church of England, for 
they were not : they were even disposed to retain in gen- 
eral the diocesan form of episcopacy ; and at their first 
coming over, as well as at other times, "they did in a 
public and printed address, call the church of England 
their dear mother, desiring the pious members of that 
church to recommend them to the mercies of God in 
their constant prayers, as a church springing out of 
their own bowels." ^ — But it was because they could 
not bear the yoke of domination, which the prince and 
the prelates of that church would fasten upon their 
necks — it was because they desired to have the church 
thoroughly reformed, and restored as far as possible, 
to its primitive purity, that they were called, by way 
of obloquy, Puritans — it was because they could not 
swear to the conscientious observance of canons and 
ceremonies, which were the very refuse of popery, and 
confessedly of human appointment, that they were per- 
secuted, disqualified, and put to death or sentenced to 
perpetual banishment : — it was because Bancroft and 
Laud, instead of Cranmer and Abbot, wore the epis- 
copal crown : — in fine, it was because the intolerant king 
James had said in his star-chamber, "let not Puritans 
be countenanced," that these Puritans took their re- 
solve, and loosened from their hearts' hold the ties of 
nature and affection, and went out, like Abraham, "not 
knowing whither they went." It was piety and virtue 
^Mather's Magnalia, vol. i. pp. 228 — 9. 



i^a_a^b^^i^KAd 



Ml 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 115 

escaping before the face of bigotry and an armed per- 
secution; "it was indeed," as it is finely expressed, "an 
humble and peaceable religion, flying from causeless 
oppression : — it was conscience attempting to escape 
from the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts." 

The second point of observation at which we are to 
view these Pilgrims is one that exhibits the influence 
of religion upon their character and conduct in a very 
different, though ecjually interesting light. 

They had bid adieu to their friends and brethren in 
Holland : — on the broad strand at Delph-Haven, with 
the ocean breaking before them, they had sunk on their 
knees, while the humble and eloquent Robinson, with 
strong crying and tears, commended them to the grace 
and power of Him who "maketh the clouds his chariots, 
and rideth upon the wings of the wind." They had 
also bid adieu to England, and seen for the last her 
white cliffs in the distant horizon. They had been buf- 
feted by many adverse winds and fierce storms; and 
after sixty days of perilous struggling with the ele- 
ments, they thought they must return, for their vessel 
was shattered, and their hearts failed them for fear of 
an unknown coast in the depth of winter. But "the 
Lord was with them; the God of Jacob was their ref- 
uge." And when they found themselves nearing the 
continent, their hopes revived, their resolution returned ; 
and while they bless the God of heaven for his protec- 
tion, they begin to think of another country — of an- 
other home. 

And this is the point at which we must view them — 
before they landed, and while yet exposed to all the 
dangers of a bleak and barbarous shore, and the anger 
of a wintry sky. The nth of November, 1620, was 
also a day of fasting and prayer; and it was marked by 



ii6 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

an event which has no parallel in the annals of the 
world. On that day a nation was born; on that day 
the Pilgrims formed themselves into a perfect com- 
munity, social, civil, religious. The fact is thus stated 
by one of their annalists. "Being thus beside their in- 
tention brought to the New-England coast, where their 
patent gave them no right nor power, they were in a 
sort reduced to a state of nature ; and some of the stran- 
gers received at London, dropping some mutinous 
speeches, as if there were now no authority over them 
— this people, therefore, before they landed, wisely 
formed themselves into a body politic, under the 
crown of England, by a solemn contract in the follow- 
ing terms, to which they all subscribed their names : 

"In the name of God, amen : we whose names are 
under written, the loyal subjects of our dread sover- 
eign Lord King James, by the grace of God king of 
Great Britain, &c. having undertaken, for the glory of 
God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and hon- 
our of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first 
colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these 
presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, 
and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves to- 
gether into a civil body politic, for our better ordering 
and preservation, and furtherance of the ends afore- 
said; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and 
frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, con- 
stitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be 
thought most meet and convenient for the general good 
of the colony; unto which we promise all due submis- 
sion and obedience. In witness whereof we have here- 
unto subscribed our names," &c. &c. — Prince's Annals, 
vol. I, p. 84. 

In the structure and adoption of this instrument we 
admire the wisdom, the foresight, the unanimity, the 



— - - ^ < ' ' ^- * 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 117 

piety of these Pilgrims, while as yet their home was 
on the deep, and every billow that broke around them 
cried, that they were aliens, and had no country ! Their 
patent was void, for it contemplated a settlement some 
hundred miles distant; they were beyond any known 
jurisdiction; they anticipated the results of jealousy 
and division among themselves; — and with a kind of 
prophetic feeling, which looked as much at the hazards, 
as at the promises of a favourable issue, they combined 
themselves into a civil community, elected their gover- 
nor and other officers, and were in fact a complete re- 
public. By this religious and voluntary compact, their 
social regulations were settled — their civil polity ar- 
ranged — and their ecclesiastical order established. 

And where do we find on the pages of history a fact 
like this? — the record of a company of emigrants so 
employed? — or of an empire thus originated? — When 
they commenced their enterprise, it was under the sanc- 
tion of a royal charter, contemplating only the pur- 
poses of trade; but now they were ready to disembark 
a self-governed and independent people : — when they 
left Leyden it was for some restricted territory on the 
banks of the Hudson ; but now, by the right that discov- 
ery and possession give, they were ready to become the 
lords of a land of liberty : — yesterday they were but a 
feeble band of colonists, fleeing for conscience sake to 
another country; to-day they are a distinct republic — 
the perfect germ of a mighty nation is developed, and 
is now ready to be planted in a soil that had not been 
trodden before, and in an air that had not been breathed 
before by civilized man. This was the influence of reli- 
gion! it was because they loved the glory of God and 
the advancement of the Christian faith, more than the 
praise of men — liberty of conscience more than the af- 
fections and blessing of a mother country, that they 



ii8 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

became first pilgrims — then a republic — and at last an 
empire ! 

As might be supposed, the result of this compact, 
entered into so unanimously, so religiously, was the 
happiest possible. For "at the moment of their land- 
ing," if I may adopt the language of their most elo- 
quent panegyrist, "they possessed institutions of gov- 
ernment and institutions of religion : and friends and 
families, and social and religious institutions, estab- 
lished by consent, founded on choice and preference, 
how nearly do these fill up our whole idea of country ! 
The morning that beamed on the first night of their 
repose, saw the Pilgrims already established. There 
were political institutions, and civil liberty, and reli- 
gious worship. Poetry has fancied nothing, in the wan- 
dering of heroes, so distinct and characteristic. Here 
was man, unprotected indeed, and unprovided for, on 
the shore of a rude and fearful wilderness; but it was 
politic, pious, and educated man. Every thing was civ- 
ilized but the physical world. Institutions, containing 
in substance all that ages had done for human govern- 
ment, were established in a forest. Cultivated mind 
was to act on uncultivated nature; and more than all, 
a government and a country were to commence with the 
very first foundations laid under the divine light of the 
Christian religion. Happy auspices of a happy futur- 
ity ! Who would wish that his country's existence had 
otherwise begun? Who would desire the power of 
going back to the ages of fable ? Who would wish for 
an origin obscured in the darkness of antiquity ? Who 
would wish for other emblazoning of his country's her- 
aldry, or other ornaments of her genealogy, than to be 
able to say, that her first existence was with intelli- 
gence — her first breath the inspiration of liberty — her 
first principle the truth of a divine religion ?" 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 119 

We come now to the third point of observation, illus- 
trating the influence of religion upon the Pilgrims, and 
inquire how that influence has resulted in the subse- 
quent and present condition of New-England. 

We look at them as they appeared on the day of their 
landing at Plymotith. The 22d of December, 1620, 
was also a day of prayer, mingled with thanksgiving 
to God. Like the patriarch, when he descended from 
the ark, after having been rocked and driven for many 
months upon a boundless deluge, they built an altar 
unto the Lord, and offered a sweet and holy sacrifice. 
They had escaped the perils of the sea, and they knew 
how to be grateful. Nor did it diminish their grati- 
tude or check the fervor of their prayer, that they found 
themselves in the midst of new and more surprising 
dangers : a horrid wilderness stretching around them 
in illimitable extent, and inhabited by wild beasts and 
more savage men — the severities of a wintry latitude, 
rendered more terrible by the ice and the storms of 
December — the ravages of a fatal disease, thinning their 
numbers and multiplying around them the graves of 
their children and companions, and while there was 
nothing to screen the dying from the tempest and the 
sky — a scarcity of provisions that an unsubdued soil 
refused to supply, and that the winds of heaven might 
refuse to bring from their native shores — the poignant 
recollections of home, and kindred, and country, three 
thousand miles distant : — under all this complicated 
misery they were content, for they had identified them- 
selves with the destinies of religion; they were self- 
justified, for as the witnesses of conscience and of truth 
they had fled into the wilderness; and they were safe. 
for they put their trust in God and "abode under the 
shadow of the Almighty;" and while their fervent, 
thankful prayer "entered into the ear of the Lord of 



I20 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

Sabaoth," there descended upon them "the spirit of wis- 
dom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, 
the spirit of knowledge, and the fear of the Lord." 
These very circumstances of extreme danger and dis- 
tress did but make them more rejoice in their self-sac- 
rifice ; — did but gird them up to higher resolutions, and 
put them more completely upon their last and best re- 
sources, intelligence and piety and the guardianship 
of God. 

Mark the results : on that day they felt the firm 
earth, and for weal or for woe adopted it as their coun- 
try; — they wept over the graves of their fellow-pil- 
grims, and resolved to repose by their side; — they 
looked off to the surrounding hills and snow-clad 
ranges, and felt that these must henceforth be their 
horizon ; — they surveyed the deep and frowning forest, 
with its savage tenantry, and resolved to subdue and 
make it the abode of pure and undefiled religion ; — they 
looked along the far-sounding shore, and resolved to 
explore its depth and islands, and point out to their 
children the places of cities and the marts of commerce ; 
— they looked up to the broad heavens, where dwelt 
their covenant God, and in prayer resolved to build him 
an house for his worship, wherever, under those hea- 
vens, like Moses, they escaped from the sword, or like 
Jacob, they rested on their pilgrimage ! 

Nor were these the only results of that day's confer- 
ence and prayer ; for these were rather the general reso- 
lutions and anticipations, which mingled with the reali- 
ties of that day, and made what would otherwise have 
been unimportant of singular moment. We have said 
that when they landed they were a complete and well 
ordered community, and that religion was the ruling 
motive of their compact. All the regulations essential 
to their social union, their civil and religious order, 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 121 

were already made, and required only to be carried 
into effect. And they were carried into effect without 
delay. On the 226. of December, 1620, the system be- 
gan : — families were arranged — government was ad- 
ministered — God was worshipped. Every thing per- 
taining to their establishment assumed the aspect of 
piety; every individual acknowledged the supremacy 
and submitted to the sanctions of religion; for they 
wanted, and therefore enacted, no other. And in this 
respect they doubtless approached nearer to the scrip- 
tural patterns of a perfect community than any body 
of men that have ever assumed the forms of govern- 
ment and religion. They took their exemplar, partly 
from the ancient theocracy, as it existed in its purest 
state, in which religion was the object of every social 
and civil regulation; and partly from the constitutions 
and canons of the primitive church, as delivered to us 
by the apostles, in which also religion was the object 
to which all others were made subservient. And we 
may well say with one of the writers of those days, 
"what a wonderful work of God was it, to stir up such 
worthies to remove themselves and their wives and 
children from their native country, to come into this 
wilderness, to set up the pure worship of God ! men fit 
for government in the magistracy, and sound, godly, 
learned men for the ministry!" "And I take notice of 
it," he further says, "as a great favour of God, not only 
to preserve my life, but to give me contentedness in all 
our straits ; insomuch that I do not remember that ever 
I did wish in my heart that I had not come into this 
country, or wish myself back again to my father's 
house. The Lord Jesus Christ was so plainly held out 
in the preaching of the gospel, and God's Holy Spirit 
was pleased to accompany the word with such efficacy 
to many, that our hearts were taken off from old Eng- 



122 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

land, and set upon heaven. The discourse, not only of 
the aged, but of the youth also, was not, how shall we 
go to England, but how shall we go to heaven?" 

It is comparatively of no importance to us, what were 
the previous fortunes of these men, or what the peculiar 
circumstances of their settlement, further than we can 
trace from them consequences affecting the character 
and fortunes of their descendants. But such conse- 
quences we do trace, and they are matter of daily con- 
sciousness and daily rejoicing. The only difference 
made by the lapse of two hundred years has been to 
give direction to the stream that burst from the Rock of 
the Pilgrims, and deepen its channel and swell its tide. 
Indeed, every view we can take of the causes leading to 
the present character and condition of the New-Eng- 
land people, carries us back through an unbroken chain 
to the settlement at Plymouth; and it is surprising to 
see how radically the fortunes of the present generation 
of their descendants, and the prospects of this country, 
as they open before us, have been made to depend upon 
the operation of pious principles in that early and feeble 
establishment. There is scarcely a principle of govern- 
ment or of civil polity — of religion or of morals, that 
enters into our now consolidated system, but may be 
traced back through slight variations to a deep spring- 
head at Plymouth. The changes that have intervened 
have not, as they often do, annihilated the first fabrics 
of religion and government : — there has been no return 
of barbarism — no destruction of liberty and law — and 
no retreat from the grand principle of religious freedom, 
that "every man has a right to worship God according 
to his conscience." On the contrary, there has been 
an advance — a steady march of intellectual and moral 
improvement; and what formed the bones and sinews 
of that infant republic, so much "afilicted, tost with 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 123 

tempest and not comforted" — so long cradled between 
the forest and the ocean — so often wakened by the yell 
of the savage, and exposed by a mother, whose tender- 
mercies were cruel, has but grown into the aspiring 
strength and manhood of this mighty empire. We see 
the spirit that actuated the infant — how the first beat- 
ings of its heart were piety — and how its first breath 
was liberty; for the same spirit, though not so purely, 
now actuates the man. 

Much more of detail than w^e can now pursue would 
be necessary to present in the strongest light the influ- 
ence of religion upon the character and conduct of the 
Pilgrims, at and subsequently to their settlement, and 
to show how that influence has resulted in the present 
condition of New-England, and of every section of our 
land where the institutions of New-England have been 
adopted. A brief sketch must suffice. 

Of the social order established by the first settlers of 
New-England, religion was the grand characteristic. 
The subordination of children, and their qualification 
for the various stations and engagements of life, — the 
obligations and duties of the marriage contract — the 
instruction and government of servants — all that per- 
tained to the family economy, and the relations and 
habitudes of society, proceeded upon Christian prin- 
ciples and the authority of the Bible; and the common 
intercourse of friends and neighbours resembled, in 
kindness and decency, the communion of a primitive 
church. They were, in truth, but one great family, 
having a common interest and common property, al- 
ways subservient to piety as the end of social order. 
Upon the principle of having all things in common, 
there was in reality but one freehold, until, by the in- 
crease of emigration from abroad, it became necessary 
for the governor and his counsellors, by general con- 



124 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

sent, to make a division of lands, and an apportionment 
of one or more acres to each family ; and thus they be- 
came a nation of independent freeholders. Further to 
prevent the danger of individual aggrandizement, they 
refused to recognise the ancient laws of entail, so in- 
jurious v^ere they esteemed to social happiness, and 
with more than the wisdom of the Spartan, provided 
that intestate property should be equally shared by the 
children of the deceased. Many have been the praises 
of their moral purity. Crimes which are frequent, and 
excite little abhorrence in the best states of society that 
we know, are recorded by them as singular and strange 
events. They tell us of the first duel that was fought — 
though by servants merely — as an offence shocking to 
morality, and requiring an exemplary punishment. But 
beside the internal evidences of their morality, leading 
us to suppose, as their annalist says, that "there never 
was perhaps before seen such a body of pious people 
together on the face of the earth," there are other tes- 
timonies of highest authority. The magistrates of 
Leyden, who were rather inimical than friendly, re- 
proving the Walloons in open court, thus said : "these 
English have lived now ten years among us, and yet 
we never had any accusation against any one of them : 
whereas your quarrels are continual." And the follow- 
inef declaration was made in a sermon before the House 
of Lords and Commons and the assembly of divines 
at Westminster, concerning the New-England settle- 
ments : "I have lived in a country seven years, and in 
all that time I never heard one profane oath, and in all 
that time I never did see a man drunk in that land." 

Their morality was such as flowed from the pure and 
blameless profession of Jesus, and it acknowledged no 
other standard — no other obligation than the gospel pre- 
cept. The consequences were such as might be sup- 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 125 

posed. The same powerful influence was felt by each 
rising generation, and the impulse then given to the 
moral sentiment and feeling of New-England remains 
unexpended to this day. God grant that it may remain 
for ever ! 

We all know, my friends, for we have felt in a 
greater or less degree the influence of those social habits 
and forms of intercourse, founded on gospel principles, 
which began with our fathers, and have continued in a 
good measure to the present period. Innovations have 
indeed taken place upon the manners and moral taste 
of those times; and some for the better, and many for 
the worse. So that it remains a question with their 
descendants, whether more has not been lost by such 
changes, in simplicity and godly sincerity, than has 
been gained by the inroads of foreign customs and 
opinions, and what is often falsely termed the progress 
of knowledge and civilization. 

Of the civil polity, adopted by the Plymouth Colony, 
religion was the motive and end. Their governor and 
his counsellors were chosen because they were men of 
piety and exerted the greatest religious influence upon 
the community, as well as because they were men of in- 
telligence and command. Their laws and civil ordi- 
nances always assumed that they were a Christian peo- 
ple : and were designed to make every thing subserve 
the spiritual and immortal interests of men. Their 
legislative acts and proclamations, while they acknow- 
ledged the equal rights of conscience, and appealed to 
the word of God as the only rule of faith and practice, 
always told that they were a Christian people : and we 
add, if the governors and legislatures of our day, with- 
out exception, followed the example, they also would 
magnify their office in the eye and the heart of some 
distant generation. In what country, except New- 



126 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

England, have we ever heard that the civil authorities 
assembled a Synod of the churches, and addressed to 
them for their prayerful consideration and advice such 
questions as these? — "What are the evils that have pro- 
voked the Lord to send his judgments on New-Eng- 
land ? And what is to be done, that so these evils may 
be reformed?" 

Might we not here pause to regret that a disposition 
has long prevailed among many in New-England and 
elsewhere, to separate as widely as possible the very ap- 
pearance of religion from the offices and acts of civil 
government? I would only remark, however, if it be 
true, as our fathers thought, that religion is essential 
to the existence of a wise and good government, those 
who would banish the Bible from the halls of legisla- 
tion, or clothe with executive power the contemners of 
practical Christianity, not only commit a sacrilege on 
the memory of the wisest and the best, but become mor- 
ally responsible to posterity for a train of consequences 
which the mind shudders to contemplate, and deserve 
to have their name blotted out from the records of time, 
and from God's "book of life!" 

While we are reviewing the civil polity of the Ply- 
mouth Colony, we cannot fail to notice the interesting 
fact, that the direct influence of religion upon their 
minds gave birth to the first government of principle 
that ever existed upon earth. Thence sprang the germs 
of civil liberty and enlightened jurisdiction that have 
since expanded into our charters of government and 
the federal constitution : — instruments that are now the 
wonder of the world ; insomuch that at the present day 
not a colony struggles into being, or a nation breaks 
the yoke of a despot, but ours must be the model of 
their constitution. And no wonder, for it must be so, 
that in the progress of religion and knowledge, the na- 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 127 

tions of the earth and the islands of every sea will wel- 
come those principles of civil and religious liberty, 
which our fathers held at so dear a sacrifice, and in 
which we, their national offspring, now singly and glo- 
riously triumph ! 

As it respects the religions institutions of the Pil- 
grims, little need be said either in praise of what we 
must admire, or in vindication of what some may deem 
erroneous. Their consistent profession as Christians — 
a profession so universal, that whoever failed to make 
it, was regarded as a kind of outlaw, unworthy of civil 
trust and private confidence; — the covenant engage- 
ments by which they bound themselves as members of 
the church, and which rested upon the most benevolent 
and catholic principles ; ^ — the order of their public and 
private worship, allowing no secular interference, and 
marked by simplicity and solemnity; — their peculiar 
reverence for the Lord's day, which was among their 
first and declared motives for abandoning the old world, 
and which they cherished and guarded with the utmost 
care and strictness ; — and their maintenance of the 
gospel in its ordinances, and ministers, and discipline, 
for the enjoyment of which they remitted no exertions, 
regretted no sacrifices — building churches, when their 
own dwellings were scarcely tenable, and supporting 
two pastors, when, as we should now judge, there was 
not half provision for one; — their constant appeal to 
the holy scriptures in every species of controversy and 
every question of duty; — their frequent days of public 
and solemn prayer, with fasting or thanksgiving, in 
reference to the overruling providence and sovereign 
grace of God; — these and a thousand minuter things 
show what were the spirit and form of their religious 
institutions. 

^Appendix, Note A. 



128 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

Their immediate and more distant descendants felt 
the predominant influence of these institutions. We 
may notice among other important results, the aston- 
ishing multiplication of churches, composed of their 
own number, and increased by successive emigrations 
from abroad : — the singular success that attended the 
labours of their missionaries among the Indian tribes; 
— and above all, the frequent and powerful revivals of 
religion that pervaded the New-England settlements 
during the first century, and that now distinguish that 
happy country as the most favoured residence of the 
Holy Spirit.^ — But upon these topics we cannot dwell. 

Whatever objection may seem to lie against them as 
wanting the principles of toleration,^ that are now held 
in protestant countries, or to speak more correctly, as 
departing in certain cases from the principles they pro- 
fessed to maintain, and as appealing unadvisedly to the 
providence of God, is weakened, if not removed, by the 
consideration that their errors were not those of prin- 
ciple, but of passionate zeal ; and that they are to be as- 
cribed to the spirit of the times and the remains of 
"antichristian darkness," and not, as those say who 
would fix a brand of infamy upon the only community 
that was ever formed on Christian principles, to the 
spirit of their religion. I regret to add, that even in 
these days of boasted light and catholic feeling, and 
when an apology is demanded for the conduct of the 
Pilgrims, there are those who still retain the intolerant 
spirit of those persecuting and burning days, and who 
still appeal to the providence and judgments of God 
with a zeal as unadvised and passionate as made the 
disciples of old say, "Lord, wilt thou that we command 
fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" — 

' Mather's Magnalia, Gillies' Collections, &c. 
' Note B. 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 129 

But it is not my design to dwell upon the imperfections 
of our fathers ; — though I might, in order to show how 
far, in the particulars above alluded to, as well as in 
others, their posterity have improved. Neither would 
I dwell upon the abuses of their religious institutions, 
which have occurred among their descendants, — nor of 
the departures from the purity of their faith and prac- 
tice, which they feared and prophesied, and which 
are to-day the reproach of New-England; — though I 
might, in order to impress the duty of retracing our 
steps, and of superadding to the pure and fervent, the 
simple and primitive religion of our fathers, all that 
has been gained by two centuries of progress in the 
light and influence of Christianity. 

Thanks be to God, in this era of their posterity the 
religious institutions of the Pilgrims for the most part 
remain ! — You, dear friends, have had the same sensa- 
tions of sacred pleasure that I have, when in the land 
of your ancestry you have noticed the traces of the 
order in which they worshipped, or felt a deeper rever- 
ence for the Sabbath they so devoutly kept, or heard 
how the Spirit has been poured out from on high in 
answer to their prayers : — when you have seen the 
churches they built, now moss grown and crumbling 
with age, or the monuments they reared over their 
faithful and beloved pastors : — when you have almost 
invoked their sainted spirits to bless you and your chil- 
dren, or stooped to write their epitaph on the unambi- 
tious gravestone, ''the memory of the just is blessed." 

There is one other subject that engaged the feelings 
and exertions of this extraordinary colony, and upon 
which we may dwell with increasing interest, and with 
fewer regrets for the delinquency of their children, viz. 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. With them it was a first prin- 



130 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ciple, that knowledge was essential to piety and vir- 
tue; and they were anxious to show against the preju- 
dices and bigotry of the times, that "religion was the 
best friend to science." 

We can only suggest a few topics illustrative of the 
zeal our fathers manifested on the subject of religious 
education in all its forms, leaving you to pursue them 
more in detail, and trace their results through the intel- 
lectual history of New-England from their first colo- 
nial laws to the present state of literature and religious 
knowledge. 

We notice first their singular attention to family in- 
struction. Not a child or a servant was suffered to 
grow up ignorant of the elements of knowledge, or 
unable to read his catechism and Bible : indeed, in less 
than twenty years after the settlement it was made a 
penal offence "if any did not teach their children and 
apprentices so much learning as to enable them to read 
perfectly the English language." The consequence of 
this was, that in every succeeding generation no one 
was necessarily destitute of the means of knowledge: 
and at this day, while in Britain, the most enlightened 
portion of the old world, but one in fifteen possesses this 
advantage, it is fully enjoyed by every child that is born 
in New-England. 

The next feature in their system we notice, was the 
early establishment of public or district schools. These 
were regularly organized in less than fourteen years 
after the settlement ; and soon became matter of legis- 
lation. "Forasmuch," says the General Court of the 
Colony, "as the maintenance of good literature doth 
much tend to the advancement of the weal and flourish- 
ing state of societies and republics, this Court doth 
therefore order, that in whatever township of this gov- 
ernment, consisting of fifty families or upwards, any 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 131 

meet man shall be obtained to teach a grammar school, 
such township shall allow at least twelve pounds, to be 
raised by rate, on all the inhabitants." And hence 
arose that powerful and wide-spreading system of dis- 
trict schools, and grammar schools, and subsequently 
of free-schools, — not left to depend for their existence 
on chance or charity, but established or regulated by 
law, — which has made the mass of the New-England 
population the most enlightened upon earth. 

From the same zeal for intellectual improvement, as 
essential to the prosperity of religion, arose the extraor- 
dinary efforts they made from the beginning to furnish 
the church with a learned as well as pious ministry. 
With the primitive Christians it was a first object to 
establish seminaries for the qualification of those who 
should succeed the apostles; and well might the apos- 
tate Julian boast, that if he could destroy these insti- 
tutions, he would destroy Christianity itself. Our fa- 
thers felt the same anxiety because they rightly judged 
that if knowledge failed in the prophet, gross darkness 
would cover the people. Nor was their anxiety vain. 
In a number of instances on record, feeble parishes did 
what in these days large towns feel unable to do : they 
supported two pastors at once — one to preach, and the 
other to teach individuals and families the truths of the 
gospel. The first ministers of New-England were 
among the best educated as well as pious of their times. 
Many of them were men of deep research, of high in- 
tellect, and powerful eloquence. In the more impor- 
tant branches of theological learning, especially, they 
were not excelled by their contemporaries : and though 
many of them were denied the advantage of foreign 
universities, we are ready to think that privation has 
been more than compensated by an originality and free- 
dom of inquiry, which would not have been tolerated 



132 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

beyond the waters, and which, their enemies being 
judges, have thrown a stronger hght upon many of the 
great truths of Cliristianity. It is now an acknow- 
ledged fact, that no country on earth is so well sup- 
plied with able instructors in all branches of learning, 
and so much blessed with a learned and faithful min- 
istry. 

In order to supply the church with able pastors, pri- 
vate instruction was soon found inadequate, and a re- 
sort to foreign universities impracticable. Hence the 
early foundation and endowment of colleges; having 
for their grand object — a fact that ought never to be 
forgotten — the education of a learned and pious minis- 
try. Need I mention what claims to be called the Uni- 
versity of New-England, founded at Cambridge within 
eighteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims, and 
Yale, and Dartmouth, and several other similar insti- 
tutions, which have trained up many hundreds to bless 
their generations, and to "shine as the brightness of the 
firmament, and as the stars for ever and ever?" 

We may add to these plans of religious education the 
prodigious efforts, made in the very infancy of the col- 
ony, for the civilization and conversion of the Indians. 
It was one of their leading motives in coming to Amer- 
ica, as they said, "to lay the foundation of extending 
the kingdom of Christ to the remote ends of the earth." 
Their labours were blessed. In a few years thousands 
of these children of the forest were gathered and set- 
tled in regular parishes, and were instructed in the ele- 
ments of Christian knowledge : many of them became 
examples of piety; and the second generation after the 
landing of the Pilgrims, listened to the gospel from 
the mouth of a multitude of Indian ministers, whose 
hearts' desire and prayer was, that their brethren might 
be saved. In the great design of evangelizing the hea- 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 133 

then world, which is now calling forth the energies of 
all Christendom, the Pilgrims hold a distinguished 
place. The lives of Eliot, and Mayhew, and Edwards, 
and Brainerd, the first apostles to the Indians, are now 
the standing commentary upon the Saviour's grand 
commission, "Go ye into all the world and preach the 
gospel to every creature." They were missionaries. 
They travelled where the only comforts and luxuries 
of life were such as wild nature furnished to the fowl 
and to the beast : — they dwelt where, for centuries a 
race of immortal beings had groaned under the unalle- 
viated curse, had lived without virtue and died without 
hope : — they laboured where no divine precept or ac- 
cent of mercy had ever broken the stillness of death, 
or a Sabbath smiled : — in the heart of a horrid wilder- 
ness, they planted the glorious cross ! and when their 
work was done, they laid down their heads at its feet 
and slept in peace! The dews of heaven came down 
gently upon their graves : the angels of mercy built 
them a monument : the stranger from the far country 
saw it, and the poor Indian came out of his woods to 
weep over it, and think of the "rest that remained 
to the people of GOD !" They were missionaries ! 
Blessed be God, their mantle now rests upon a thou- 
sand heralds of the cross in both hemispheres, and in 
the ocean's farthest isles ! 

These things, my hearers, shew the principle and 
spirit of our fathers on the subject of religious educa- 
tion; and they shew also what the influence of their 
zeal in the cause of knowledge and religion has been 
upon the character and condition of their posterity, 
whether at home or abroad. "Christo et Ecclesise," 
was inscribed upon all their institutions and all their 
efforts. And this is the reason why for nearly a cen- 
tury the literature of America was almost confined to 



134 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

New-England; why the descendants of the Pilgrims 
have been blessed with so much social felicity, with so 
much civil eminence, with so many revivals of religion, 
with so many religious institutions and seminaries of 
learning, with such a profusion of the richest favours 
that a discriminating Providence can bestow upon a 
people ! This is the reason why they are now the most 
intelligent, the most politic, the most happy, the most 
pious people upon earth; and why they have exerted, 
and will continue to exert such a mighty influence upon 
the destinies of America and of the world ! It is be- 
cause RELIGION WAS THEIR MOTIVE, THEIR MEAN, AND 
THEIR end! 

Now let us go back again to the rock, where the Pil- 
grims first stood, and look abroad once more upon this 
wide and happy land, so full of their lineal or adopted 
sons, and repeat the question, to whom do we owe it, 
that "the wilderness has thus been turned into a fruit- 
ful field, and the desert has become as the garden of the 
Lord?" To whom do we owe it, under an all-wise 
Providence, that this nation, so miraculously born, is 
now contributing with such effect to the welfare of the 
human family, by aiding the march of mental and 
moral improvement, and by giving an example to the 
nations of what it is to be pious, intelligent, and free? 
To whom do we owe it, that with us the great ends of 
the social compact are accomplished to a degree of per- 
fection never before realized ; that the union of public 
power and private liberty is here exhibited in a har- 
mony so singular and perfect, as to allow the might of 
political combination to rest upon the basis of individual 
virtue, and to call into exercise, by the very freedom 
which such a union gives, all the powers that contribute 
to national prosperity? To whom do we owe it, that 
the pure and powerful light of the gospel is now shed 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 135 

abroad over these countries, and is rapidly gaining upon 
the darkness of the western world; — that the impor- 
tance of religion to the temporal welfare of men, and to 
the permanence of wise institutions is here beginning 
to be felt in its just measure; — that the influence of a 
divine revelation is not here, as in almost every other 
section of Christendom, wrested to purposes of worldly 
ambition; — that the holy Bible is not sealed from the^ 
eyes of those for whom it was intended ; — and the best 
charities and noblest powers of the soul degraded by 
the terrors of a dark and artful superstition? To 
whom do we owe it, that in this favoured land the gos- 
pel of the grace of God has best displayed its power 
to bless humanity, by uniting the anticipations of a 
better world with the highest interests and pursuits of 
this; — by carrying its merciful influence into the very 
business and bosoms of men ; — by making the ignorant 
wise and the miserable happy; — by breaking the fetters 
of the slave, and teaching "the babe and the suckling" 
those simple and sublime truths, which give to life its 
dignity and virtue, and fill immortality with hope? — 
To whom do we owe all this? — Doubtless to the Ply- 
mouth Pilgrims! — Happily did one of those fearless 
exiles exclaim, in view of all that was past, and of the 
blessing, and honour, and glory that was yet to come, 
"God hath sifted three kingdoms, that he might gather 
the choice grain, and plant it in the wilderness !" 

But I have done: — not because the theme is ex- 
hausted, for you see how it swells immeasurably — how 
it peoples all the region of thought and feeling — how 
deeply it enters into the present condition and charac- 
ter of New-England and her sons — how it spreads out 
like heaven's clear and merciful light over all this happy 
country, and with the visions and prophecies of a holy 
patriotism, fills the abyss of future times ! — I leave you 



136 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

to judge whether I have estimated too highly the influ- 
ence of rehgion upon the spirit and conduct of the Pil- 
grims; and whether I have ascribed too much to this 
influence in accounting for the fact, that in the national 
panorama this country is now — the world being judges 
— the brightest, sweetest, holiest spot on earth ! I will 
trust your judgment, because I feel that I have an ad- 
vocate in your best affections that is not constrained by 
prejudice or power : — and I will call you once more — it 
may be the last time before our spirits shall return to 
the God of our fathers — once more, on these sacred 
altars, which but for them had never been reared, to 
leave a memorial of filial piety and gratitude to God. 
Here let us bless their memory by resolving to follow 
their examples and to imbibe and perpetuate the hum- 
ble, the pious, the venerable, the exalted spirit of the 
Pilgrims ! — As we would promote to the utmost the 
social and religious welfare of this empire and of the 
world, here let us resolve to hold sacredly, and under 
the pledge of "life, and fortune, and our sacred hon- 
our," transmit to our children's children the great in- 
heritance they have bequeathed ! Let us resolve to vin- 
dicate our claim to such a parentage by maintaining at 
home and abroad, in the city and the wilderness, the 
spirit and form of that religion which reigned so abso- 
lutely in the bosoms and counsels of our fathers, and 
which is the first — the last — the only blessing of man- 
kind ! Here, at the close of this holy Sabbath, and in 
view of a Sabbath that shall dawn upon our children 
some hundred years hence — and in view also of that 
Sabbath which remains to the people of God, and which 
the Pilgrims now keep in felicity and glory, — let us 
together say, "Blessed be the Lord God, who only doeth 
wondrous things ; and blessed be his glorious name for 
ever ; and let the whole earth be filled with his glory : — 
Amen, and Amen !" 



APPENDIX 



NOTE A. 

The following is the first covenant that was formed 
and adopted by the church in New-England. Aside from 
the devout and catholic spirit which pervades it, the docu- 
ment is very interesting, and should be had in remem- 
brance : 

"We covenant with our Lord, and with one another : 
we bind ourselves in the presence of God, to walk together 
in all his ways, according as he is pleased to reveal him- 
self to us in his blessed word of truth, and do profess to 
walk as follows, through the power and grace of our 
Lord Jesus Christ : — We avouch the Lord to be our God, 
and ourselves to be his people, in the truth and simplicity 
of our spirits. We give ourselves to the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and to the word of his grace, for the teaching, 
ruling, and sanctifying us in matters of worship and con- 
versation, resolving to reject all canons and constitutions 
of men in worship. — We promise to walk with our breth- 
ren with all watchfulness and tenderness, avoiding jeal- 
ousies, suspicions, backbitings, censurings, provokings, 
secret risings of spirit against them, but in all offences to 
follow the rule of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to bear and 
forbear, give and forgive, as he hath taught us. In pub- 
lic or private we will willingly do nothing to the offence 
of the church, but will be willing to take advice for our- 
selves and ours as occasion shall be presented. — We will 
not in the congregation be forward, either to show our 

137 



138 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

own gifts and parts in speaking, or scrupling, or in dis- 
covering the weaknesses or failings of our brethren, but 
attend an ordinary call thereunto, knowing how much the 
Lord may be dishonoured, and his gospel and the profes- 
sion of it slighted by our distempers and weaknesses in 
public. — We bind ourselves to study the advancement 
of the gospel in all truth and peace, both in regard of 
those that are within or without, no way slighting our 
sister churches, but using their counsel as need shall be ; 
not laying a stumbling-block before any, no, not the In- 
dians, whose good we desire to promote, and so to con- 
verse, as we may avoid the very appearance of evil. — We 
do hereby promise to carry ourselves in all lawful obe- 
dience to those that are over us in church or common- 
wealth, knowing how well pleasing it will be to the Lord 
that they should have encouragement in their places, by 
our not grieving their spirits by our irregularities. — We 
resolve to approve ourselves to the Lord in our particular 
callings, shunning idleness, as the bane of any state ; nor 
will we deal hardly or oppressingly with any, wherein we 
are the Lord's stewards. Promising, also, to the best of 
our ability, to teach our children and servants the know- 
ledge of God and of his will, that they may serve him 
also. — And all this not by any strength of our own, but 
by the Lord Jesus Christ, whose blood we desire may 
sprinkle this our covenant, made in his name." 

Gillies' Collections, vol. i, pp. 331, 332. 



NOTE B. 

It has not unfrequently been objected to the first set- 
tlers of New-England, that they were destitute of the 
true spirit of toleration, and that they were no more catho- 
lic in their views and feelings than the church from whose 
domination they fled. That both these allegations are 
untrue we have abundant evidence; and it is to be re- 



PHILIP MELANCTHON WHELPLEY 139 

gretted that the character of the Pilgrims should still need 
a vindication from unfounded and illiberal charges. They 
erred in some instances it is admitted : but their errors 
arose, not from false principles, but from an accidental 
and highly provoked departure from the principles they 
adopted, and, saving in the instances alluded to, always 
maintained. They erred as a Christian errs who is 
wrought up to anger until he forgets for an hour that he 
is a Christian : and while their departure from their own 
principles in these cases showed that they were not yet 
emancipated from the spirit of the age in which they 
lived ; it showed also, as by a deeper shading, that they 
were far before the age in which they lived. 

Whoever will read the following interesting charge, 
given by Mr. Robinson to the Plymouth Colony at their 
departure from Holland, will no longer remain in doubt 
about their sentiments respecting toleration and Catholi- 
cism. 

''Brethren, we are now quickly to part from one an- 
other : and whether I may ever live to see your faces on 
earth any more, the God of heaven only knows. But 
whether the Lord hath appointed that or no, I charge 
you before God, and before his blessed angels, that you 
follow me no further than you have seen me follow the 
Lord Jesus Christ. If God reveal any thing to you by 
any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as 
ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry, for 
I am verily persuaded, I am very confident the Lord hath 
more truth yet to break forth out of his holy word. I 
cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed 
churches who are come to a period in religion ; and will 
go at present no further than the instruments of their first 
reformation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go be- 
yond what Luther saw : whatever part of his will our 
good God has imparted and revealed unto Calvin, they 
will rather die than embrace it. And the Calvinists, you 
see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of 
God, who yet saw not all things. 



I40 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

"This is a misery much to be lamented ; for though they 
were burning and shining hghts in their times, yet they 
penetrated not into the whole counsel of God ; but were 
they now living, they would be as willing to embrace 
further light, as that which they first received. I be- 
seech you to remember it : it is an article of your church 
covenant, that you will be ready to receive whatever truth 
shall be made known unto you from the zvritten zvord of 
God. Remember that, and every other article of your 
most sacred covenant. But I must herewithal exhort 
you to take heed what you receive as truth : examine it, 
consider it, compare it with the other scriptures of truth, 
before you do receive it. For it is not possible the Chris- 
tian world should come so lately out of such thick anti- 
christian darkness, and that perfection of knowledge 
should break forth at once. And I would wish you by 
all means to close with the godly people of England ; 
study union with them in all things wherein you can have 
it without sin, rather than in the least measure to affect 
a division or separation from them." &c. &c. 

Mather's Magnolia, vol. i. pp. 59, 60. 



ADDRESS 

SAMUEL L. KNAPP 
1829 



SAMUEL LORENZO KNAPP 
(1784-1838.) 

Samuel L. Knapp, the author of the life of Webster, was well 
known as an editor and writer of historical and biographical 
sketches. He was a native of Newburyport, Massachusetts, a 
graduate of Dartmouth and by profession a lawyer. His ad- 
dress was given at the celebration of 1829, when was first sung 
the ode, written by Bryant for the society and often there- 
after mentioned in the reports. 

Wild was the day, the wintry sea 

Moaned sadly on New England's strand, 

When first the thoughtful and the free. 
Our fathers, trod the desert land. 

They little thought how pure a light, 

With years should gather round that day: 

How love should keep their memories bright ; 
How wide a realm their sons should sway. 

Green are their bays, but greener still. 
Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed ; 

And regions, now untrod, shall thrill 

With reverence when their names are breathed : 

Till where the sun, with softer fires, 

Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep, 
The children of the Pilgrim Sires, 

This hallowed day, like us, shall keep. 



ADDRESS 



Brethren of the Nezv-England Society, — 

TO the city and country of our adoption and resi- 
dence, we owe all allegiance and fidelity, and all 
that respect and affection which calls forth our best 
talents in their service at all times. In peace, we should 
assist in the cultivation of all the arts of peace, and the 
charities of life; and in war, stand ready to share in 
every danger in repelling invasion, to the shedding of 
the last drop of blood that flows in our veins. Being 
thus willing, from determination and principle, to be 
identified with those with whom we live, and act, and 
enjoy, no one of thought, feeling, taste, or patriotism, 
would deny us the right and privilege now and then, on 
proper occasions, of turning with all the yearnings of 
our souls to our birthplace, and there indulging our af- 
fections in contemplating the history of our ancestors, in 
wandering in imagination among their resting places, 
or in tracing some conspicuous individual from the 
cradle to the grave, or passing to the growth of society, 
the rapid rise of the most valuable institutions, com- 
menced and sustained by our forefathers, with an un- 
equalled liberality, in the days of poverty, hardship, 
and peril. 

Two hundred and nine years ago, this day, a small 
vessel, of an hundred and eighty tons burden, not much 

143 



144 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

larger than some of our coasting vessels at this period, 
on board of which, according to the notions of modern 
comfort, not more than a dozen passengers could be ac- 
commodated for a short voyage, entered the harbour of 
Plymouth, and from her landed, with the intention of 
making it a permanent residence, an hundred and one 
persons. The bleak shores of New-England received 
this little band of Pilgrims, at this inclement season of 
the year, after they had been an hundred and sixty-nine 
days from Holland, and an hundred and seven from 
England. — The deed was one of daring, and one which 
could alone have been supported by religion, enthu- 
siasm, and fortitude : their minds were braced up to it ; 
there was something of that glow which beamed from 
the countenance of the first martyr in every breast of 
the Pilgrims. They had lived nearly eleven years in a 
strange land, and had learned to concentrate their men- 
tal energies, and to bring them to bear on this one pur- 
pose — on finding an asylum, where they could, without 
being molested, enjoy their religion in their own way. — 
The whole time of their exile was one continued train- 
ing for the enterprise, both as to body and mind. Their 
great leader and patriarch, John Robinson, was a man 
of true evangelical piety, and of most consummate po- 
litical sagacity ; his religious creed was simple and pure 
— the doctrines of his divine master. He held in rev- 
erence the mighty names of the reformers, but he 
spurned the thoughts of holding on the skirts of the 
garments of mortal, sinful man, to raise him to eternal 
life, and he bade his followers beware of names. His 
parting blessing to the Pilgrims should have a brighter 
glory than being written in letters of gold, in temples 
reared by hands ; they should be written on the hearts 
of every Christian republican. His doctrines were the 
essence of human reasoning, aided by the lights of reve- 



SAMUEL LORENZO KNAPP 145 

lation. He implored them, in the name of his father 
in heaven; by all they suffered and by all they enjoyed, 
to become wiser and better. They followed his prin- 
ciples from love and duty; and every wind that lacer- 
ated the branches of the trees they planted, drove the 
roots deeper into the soil. 

The first days of the Pilgrims were dark and sorrow- 
ful ; before the return of spring, many of them had paid 
the debt of nature : mourning was in every family, and 
the cold and snowy bosom of the virgin earth had been 
consecrated by the ashes of their beloved dead, and hal- 
lowed by the hopes of the resurrection and the life to 
come, before the soil had been turned up for the plant- 
ing of a single vegetable for their sustenance, or a 
flower had sprung from it by the hand of cultivation. 
Forty-four had died before the end of March, and the 
rest were weary and heavy laden with many cares ; but 
the sickened soul has a communion with God that no 
language can reach ; it rests on the promises of revela- 
tion, and has a foretaste of immortality. I shall pass 
over the struggles, the patience, the fortitude, and all 
that reliance upon Providence so fully shown in the 
conduct of the Pilgrims, and look for a moment to 
causes near or remote, which produced these events — 
the discovery and settlement of our country. 

The settlement of Massachusetts Bay, ten years after 
the landing of the Pilgrims, was in pursuance of the 
same great plan of enjoying their own thoughts in their 
own way. This expedition was on a ten-fold broader 
scale than the former, with a better digested system of 
operations, and, of course, was more successfully exe- 
cuted : but those settlers had days of sickness, of heart- 
ache, of hardships and trials; but in their march, they 
cheered the Pilgrims, and made their safety a common 
cause. The usual view of this subject is, that the set- 



146 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

tlement of New-England grew out of the religious per- 
secutions in England, after the death of Elizabeth. I 
am not content with so confined a view, and will ven- 
ture on a wider range of thought than this ; for I con- 
sider the discovery and settlement of this country the 
greatest event in the history of man, saving and except- 
ing the introduction of our holy religion ; and I think I 
see through the vista of history the finger of God point- 
ing to it for six centuries before its accomplishment. 
The crusades opened the drama; they did indeed ex- 
haust Europe, ignorant and fanatical Europe, of her 
best blood and treasure; but they brought home many 
lessons of experience. They learnt much from the vir- 
tues of the infidels they went out to extirpate or prose- 
lyte. — In the Saracenic character was a sturdiness of 
virtue, far transcending that which passed well in the 
Christian world at that time, and that they were far 
better informed, cannot now be questioned. Every 
battle and all the bloodshed of the crusades sprung from 
the excitement which at that period awakened the hu- 
man mind to action ; and out of the sum of human er- 
rors were brought many true results. In the year 1453, 
the Turkish Emperor turned his sword on Europe; 
and Constantinople, so long the proud seat of the Greek 
Emperors, fell before his conquering arm. The Chris- 
tian world was amazed and terrified beyond description : 
they saw in the standard of the Turk, a meteor, that 
was to blaze over Europe. Churches were to sink be- 
fore minarets and mosques ; and the alkoran was to sup- 
plant the sacred scriptures : but shortsighted man was 
disappointed most happily in this : the arms of the con- 
queror went no farther, and the seeming evil produced 
abundance of good. — The Mussulman drove out, from 
this ancient and lovely seat of learning, the Greek schol- 
ars and philosophers who had long congregated there, 



SAMUEL LORENZO KNAPP 147 

and made them schoolmasters for all Europe. They 
brought out with them many rich manuscripts, which 
had been concealed from the greatest portion of the 
world for ages. Kings, nobles, and sovereign pontiffs 
contended with one another for the possession of these 
treasures; but while they were engaged in this noble 
strife, the art of printing was discovered; and almost 
faultless copies of the classics were multiplied, until the 
humblest scholar could enjoy the company of the poets 
and orators of ancient days, with the same freedom as 
the potentates of the earth. — From this moment the in- 
tellectual world was changed. This invention was at 
once the sign and the proof, that the world should never 
again be deluged by a flood of ignorance : not only were 
the classics disseminated, but the scriptures also were 
put into every one's hands. The human mind began 
to throw off its shackles, and a spirit of free inquiry 
went abroad. Every one was active in the pursuit of 
knowledge. This was not all : about this time gun- 
powder, which had been previously discovered, came 
into general use, in military and naval warfare, and the 
campaign was now more often decided by science and 
skill than by mere physical force. 

This change in warfare was absolutely necessary to 
the settlement of this country, in order that the skill of 
the few should be equal to the strength of the many. 
This skill saved the New-England colonies in the Pe- 
quot war. If printing had not been discovered, in all 
probability, Columbus would not have received suffi- 
cient of the elements of geometry to have assisted him 
in traversing the Atlantic ; and if fire-arms and cannon 
had not been in use, the handful of Spaniards would 
not have got a footing on the continent. 

The discovery of the new world gave a new spring 
to human enterprise, opened new trains of thought, new 



148 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

paths of gain and of information. Man before this 
period was more dependent on his own thoughts for im- 
provement than afterwards, when by a rapid circulation 
of books his mind became enriched by the rays of hght 
from ten thousand other minds. Guided by these new 
impulses, he arose and swept away the thousand little 
errors of thinking, and grappled with dogmas, which 
in former days he feared to touch. — The sovereign 
Pontiff, whose ecclesiastical reign was unbounded by 
seas and empires, grew more proud by this extent of 
authority, and more lavish of his wealth, believing that 
the western world was full of gold. — Still the fulness 
of time had not come for planting a Colony in New- 
England. It was necessary not only that man should 
become enlightened and polished, but that his morals 
should become stricter, and his reasoning powers made 
more acute and discriminating, before he could set out 
upon the doctrine of self-government, and to fix his 
own articles of belief. The awful responsibility of 
reasoning for one's self had not been for ages assumed. 
Scintillations of freedom of thought were seen here and 
there, when Luther burst in a blaze upon the errors of 
the Pontiff, the Church, and all who had sustained 
them. Like other reformers, he was often more zeal- 
ous than wise, and sometimes labored harder to correct 
a folly, than to destroy a false principle; but his ends 
were noble, and his means honest, and primitive. He 
dared, single-handed, to pluck the wkard heard of 
hoary error; to meet the idols of wealth and power, 
with reason and scripture, as his only weapons. He 
wrestled with ignorance and sophistry; fought bigotry; 
and, unappalled, met tyranny and oppression. With 
the natural courage of a Caesar, he united the inflexible 
spirit of the Christian martyr. His labors were won- 
derful, and their effects still more so. In imitation of 



SAMUEL LORENZO KNAPP 149 

his divine Master, he entered the temple with a scourge, 
and drove out the changers of money, the extortioners, 
and those who daily polluted the sacred fane. But one 
man, however great his powers, could not reform an 
age, or correct a church, grown callous and proud, and 
grasping at still greater sway over the minds of men. 
Another reformer followed with equal genius, and 
equal zeal. Luther attacked practices and habits; but 
Calvin, striving to root out false principles, plunged 
into the depths of metaphysics, and set the world to 
reasoning on all abstruse subjects. He came more to 
reform thoughts and opinions, than acts and deeds; 
still he was not unmindful of these things. In the 
ways of God, the wrath of man shall praise him; so do 
his weaknesses, his follies, and his passions; the quar- 
rel between Henry VHL and the Pope, was another 
cause of the advancement of true religion. Henry's 
case proved that all that was done on earth, by man 
assuming to be holy, was not ratified in heaven; for 
England flourished notwithstanding all the anathemas 
launched from the Vatican. After men had begun to 
reason for themselves in every part of Europe, sects 
grew up, and boldly assailed the established order of 
things. Some of them rose in frenzy, and died in 
shame; but others have continued, and will continue, 
because they were founded upon immutable principles. 
Among those who held their faith steadfast and im- 
movable, were our Pilgrim Fathers; for their belief 
contained what no other creed ever did before — a decla- 
ration that it was susceptible of improvement, and with 
this frank avowal, — that God has more truth yet to break 
forth from his holy word ; and it was their firm persua- 
sion, that new lights would constantly arise, and new 
and refreshing views of the will of God would be given 
from the scriptures ; that man, as a religious being, was 



ISO NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

to be progressive, as well as an intellectual one. I am 
not making or discussing creeds; but simply saying, 
that I believe these to be sound principles. The Pil- 
grims were of the order called Puritans, and of the sect 
called Brownites; but the great divine at their head 
conjured them to sink the name, and they did so among 
themselves, after they arrived in this country; but the 
appellation of Pilgrims they retained with fondness; 
for the first child born among them, on these shores, 
they baptised Peregrine, in allusion to their wanderings. 
Thus the moral, intellectual, religious, and political 
seed sown on these northern shores was as pure and as 
full of life as any ever sown on any soil in any age of 
the world. In examining the course pursued by the 
Pilgrims, every one must be struck with the strong 
moral honesty in their first intercourse with each other. 
A community of interests they soon found would not 
answer their purpose, and they came to an amicable 
understanding of having separate worldly interests, 
preserving the integrity of ecclesiastical, legislative, 
and military power. There were still so few of them 
for many years, and they were so closely connected in 
every thing, that they understood each other's minds, 
dispositions, and course of thinking, as well as acting. 
They were truly one people, of one heart, and of one 
mind. Labor gave them muscular strength, and their 
habits of reasoning upon every thing, taught them 
sagacity and quickness of thought. The philosophy of 
man as a thinking and an immortal being, tried by the 
standard of the scriptures — the nature of governments 
— the doctrine of equal rights — the duties of rulers — 
how far obedience to civil institutions should extend, — 
were constant topics of discussion in the labors of the 
field, in the chase over the hunting grounds, in the fish- 
ing smack, or on their travels in search of their foes. 



SAMUEL LORENZO KNAPP 151 

The constant alarm they were in for their personal 
safety, and the protection of their dwellings, instructed 
them in the true grounds of human courage — a confi- 
dence in themselves and in one another. Almost any 
man will fight bravely who is sure of the courage of his 
associates. They knew with whom they went out to 
fight, against whom they were to fight, and for what 
they fought; not only for their own existence, but for 
their wives and little ones. It was necessity that made 
them warriors ; there was no prince or potentate to re- 
ward their valor ; no spoil of an opulent enemy to gain 
and divide ; no wreaths of glory ; no huzzas of a grate- 
ful people were known to them. To fight well, was an 
every-day duty, and their ties grew stronger by every 
shock. They were anxious for their offspring, and not 
for their immediate descendants alone, but for more 
remote posterity. They wisely came to the conclusion, 
that a republican government could not be supported 
without a more than ordinary share of intelligence, and 
they set about establishing schools on the broadest 
basis; and declared, that as the community shared in 
the benefits of a general diffusion of knowledge, they 
should be at the expense of educating the whole mass 
of the children. In the seventeenth year of the settle- 
ment of Massachusetts Bay, (May, 1647,) they passed 
this ordinance, the most remarkable on the page of 
history. It was at once a proud tribute to their ances- 
tors, and a spirited determination of their own, not to 
suffer their descendants to degenerate. They ordered 
that every town containing fifty families or household- 
ers, should maintain a school, for reading and writing ; 
and that every town that numbered one hundred fami- 
lies or householders, should support a grammar school. 
The reasons given, may seem quaint at the present day, 
but I think they are most admirable, and should never 



152 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

be forgotten. Some have attempted to take from us 
the honor of first establishing public schools at the com- 
mon expense; this were a vain attempt: our records 
show the fact without difficulty, and we know that our 
records are true. The ordinance was carried into ef- 
fect, if possible, in a more republican manner than one 
would expect from the very letter of the ordinance; for 
when a town was divided into school districts, each dis- 
trict was taxed in proportion to its property, and the 
school money was divided among the districts, in pro- 
portion to the number of persons in it. And this prin- 
ciple, in many parts of New-England, is still extant. 
The ordinance I referred to runs thus: "It being one 
chief project of satan, to keep men from the knowledge 
of the scriptures, as in former times, keeping them in 
unknown tongues, so in these latter times, by persuad- 
ing from the use of tongues, that so at least the true 
sense and meaning of the original might be clouded 
and corrupted with false glosses of deceivers ; to the end 
that learning may not be buried in the graves of our 
forefathers in church and commonwealth, the Lord as- 
sisting our endeavors; it is ordered," &c. making the 
requisitions we have mentioned. In May, 1671, the 
penalty for neglect of this ordinance was increased; 
and in October, 1683, it was ordered, that every town, 
consisting of more than five hundred families or house- 
holders, should support two grammar schools and two 
writing schools. At the very threshold of their politi- 
cal existence, a college was founded; and from that 
time to this, most liberally supported. The system of 
parish, town, and county government, gave all who 
strove for it, an opportunity to display their talents in 
some public way; there was no particular rank aside 
from the elective franchise, for the aspiring youth to 
bow to, for office or favor. A man must then have had 



SAMUEL LORENZO KNAPP 153 

regard to the feelings of a virtuous and an enlightened 
people to rise into power. The government was in its 
form simple; but there is more wisdom in simplicity, 
than in complexity. 

The machinery of government was understood by 
all, for there were no concealed wires or hidden springs 
known to a favored few, but unknown to the mass of 
the people; and there was but very little party spirit 
existing among them. The good of the whole was the 
happiness of each. 

For the first century their growth was slow, but solid 
and hardy. Their numerous wars and their traffic to 
the unhealthy climate of the West Indies, made great 
inroads upon the ranks of those just entering, and of 
those who had just entered into life. The whole com- 
munity were like that class in other countries in which 
it has been said, that nearly all virtue and intelligence 
centres; in the class which has not reached opulence, 
and yet is above want. — Our forefathers put in no 
claims for ancestral honors or splendid alliances, but 
they were justly proud of a pure, honest blood; there 
were no left-hand marriages among them, and none of 
the poison of licentiousness, or the taint of crime. The 
women were as brave as the men, and a heroic mother 
seldom has a coward son. He who learns his lessons 
of valor on the knee of her who bore him, never shrinks 
from tales of fear, told by other tongues. Pure prin- 
ciples, early instilled into the human mind, where there 
are no evil communications to corrupt them, generally 
last through life. The other portions of New-Eng- 
land were settled principally by emigrants from the old 
colony and Massachusetts Bay, and possessed the same 
characteristics, and have retained them quite as well as 
the parent states. I am fully persuaded that the links 
in the great chain of events, in order to make this coun- 



154 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

try a vast empire of intelligence, of science, of inven- 
tion, of political wisdom, can as easily be traced since 
the first settlement of this country, as before that period. 

I think it was fortunate that the colonies had differ- 
ent origins as well as different habits in many things, 
previous to the necessity of their union in the revolu- 
tionary contest; for growing up in this separate way, 
they had no party feuds to settle, no old wounds to 
heal. The intercourse they had encouraged with each 
other had been mostly commercial, and commerce 
brings with it the best courtesies of life ; and it is about 
as strong as any other bond of union, for men will sel- 
dom quarrel when a direct and palpable interest is at 
stake between them. 

The good, steady, industrious habits, and correct 
principles of the first settlers of the New-Netherlands, 
have been seen and felt in every stage of the growth of 
New- York. They had a little more than a half cen- 
tury's start when the government of the colony passed 
into the hands of the English; but Holland as well as 
England was among the leading nations of Europe, at 
that time, in learning as well as commercial enterprise ; 
and the union of the Dutch and English was, all things 
considered, a happy one. There were no hatreds or 
strifes that grew out of it. It made each a little more 
emulous to be thrifty than the other, and both pros- 
pered the better for it. They were the nearest neigh- 
bors to New-England, and no serious misunderstand- 
ings ever arose between them. 

Virginia was too far removed from New-England 
ever to have any disputes with her. They moved on in 
their own course. Virginia, during the time of the 
commonwealth, protected the royalists : and at the res- 
toration, New-England screened the patriot regicides 
from royal vengeance. 



SAMUEL LORENZO KNAPP i55 

The nearest neighbors to New- York (the settlers of 
New- Jersey and of Delaware) were the descendants of 
those free-born souls, who, ages ago, breathed the spirit 
of liberty on the mountains of Delecarlia, or shot from 
the gulph of Finland, in "their steeds of the Ocean," as 
they called their ships of war, and were the terror and 
admiration of the world. The love of liberty was never 
lost in them. 

The colony planted and protected by Lord Baltimore 
and his associates, was early tolerant, and for many 
years in some of the features of its government was as 
democratic as any one now in the Union. For the first 
century of their growth, they had but a small com- 
merce; the mother country sent her ships and took off 
her tobacco, or the vessels of the East came and 
freighted it for them, or for the merchants in England ; 
the same thing to the grower of the article. This col- 
ony cherished the mild arts of domestic life, being but 
little annoyed by the Indians in the first periods of her 
history. 

Pennsylvania at a later period, was planted in wis- 
dom, and throve by industry, peace, and enterprise : she 
early saw her own policy and steadily pursued it, up 
to the time of the revolution, and even then. The far- 
thest southern colonies also knew that they could de- 
pend on the North and East in every crisis. In fact, 
each and all the thirteen colonies had, from their ear- 
liest days, been uninfluenced by each other in a direct 
way; but the history of each was known to the other, 
and there was a strong sympathy existing between 
them all, for all believed in their hearts that they must 
one day unite for great purposes and noble ends, al- 
though the impression might not have then been clearly 
defined to themselves; but all these things gave them 
great confidence in each other's integrity, sincerity, and 



156 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OR-\TIOXS 

physical and moral couraope. The course of events led 
them to reason on a few ^great topics in the same tone 
of feeling. In fact, only one great proposition was at 
length presented to them, which was. — ^will you consent 
to be taxed by the mother country, without being rep- 
resented in the British Parliament? It is idle at this 
time of day to talk about any other oppression than tlie 
violation of rights. We had fought and bled in the 
"wais of England, but we were volunteers in the cause, 
and could complain of nothing but want of remunera- 
tion. It was the declaration of the British Parliament, 
that there was a right inherent in that body ^'to tax us 
in all cases whatsoever.'" Thai was the only just and 
true ground for war at that time. There were no real 
grievances, only a few imaginary ones, until we justly 
met and opposed this political absurdrt^- of the mother 
country. /Jl the grievances enumerated in the peti- 
tions of that day, greiK- out of our glorious opposition 
to that principle. The principle once established, the 
Tigiits of freemen were gone for ever. To oppose this 
assumption they complained, they reasoned, they made 
a stand, and they f ouglit. Tiiis seemed hard, but il all 
vrorked together for good : for iiad the Parliament of 
Great Britain, at the precise moment when she made 
this tmconstitutional stretch of power — (T speak of her 
own Constitution I — passed an act for our entire inde- 
pendence, and as a matter of kindneF^s said, now you are 
free and independent, and when you can establish a per- 
manent government we will recognise you as a sover- 
eign and independent nation, and enter into treaties with 
you upon terms of equality, this would have been no 
gift at all ; for the colonies could not have agreed upon 
a iorm of government that would have brought out the 
energies of the nation: some loose league migiit have 
been made among them, but nothing like the present 



SAMUEL LORENZO KXAPP 157 

government would have been established. It required 
a seven years' war ; a long period of deep suffering, and 
that intimacy, which danger and triumph gives, to 
make these states acquainted with each other : and even 
all this, severe and heavy as it came upon us, and glo- 
rious as our triumphs were, did not bring the people to 
fix on a form of government; it required six years of 
national weakness, debt, and confusion, to bring the 
jealous minds of the people to the adoption of a federal 
constitution; and after all, this was a matter of com- 
promise, and not precisely such an one as all could have 
wished. New-England consented to have an odious 
feature remain in the constitution, merely for the sake 
of harmony and peace, and commerce, and the operation 
of enterprise. By this article there are as many repre- 
sentatives of slaves in congress — slaves, the personal 
property of their masters — as there are, at present, 
members from ^Massachusetts, New-Hampshire, and 
Rhode-Island. This was indeed, giving up much; but 
perhaps not more than New- York gave up in another 
way. Although her commerce then was only third rate, 
yet her wise statesmen saw that she was to be decidedly 
the first in America. No one could, for a moment, 
have doubted the capacity of the State of New- York 
for business, nor believed that this power would have 
remained concealed, or be unimproved for any consider- 
able length of time ; yet her statesmen and high-minded 
patriots gave up all these advantages for the sake of 
union, harmony, and national prosperity. — She has one 
sixth of the representation, and has paid, and will for 
a century to come pay, more than one-third of the reve- 
nue; or, which is the same thing, it has been collected 
in this port. I name not these things with any com- 
plaint. I should, had I been a politician in those days, 
have made the same sacrifices, great as indeed they 



I5S XiW EXGLAXD SOCIETY ORATIOXS 

ijpere, iiar "ihf sake of seerng a nancG rise snd iske ber 
ssand- £ idri one indeed. Trhich she h?.-? msimzined ir 



prejucii:^ dt lizmajirr. ismce xnis pen:»z. mere nave 
Been xrmes 

i?ripT ST' Gz: : — ._ -.— -_ .- -^ _~^^: 

TKW5 sue. r .ai 3TT5 isEve frejiifnT'y c^rae in criZisian in 
our Xet "~ iendf - ^ - 

inr-, 3-^- :. _; : : rii ibe i, _^ :. 

"hB-m>«^~ "witsn cprrecred by the £rr»3i sense rf ibe msiiT. 
l>>!^rifar ^ : - r vn - ^Li rdS HT _ : " . i ±>e Iirdc 

rdzkem^- -^Drfnr bni" ^- - epbezieral, 

mDmernETT dineciarE. need no* ziErm rHp iiDnesi End 
" - - : ~Hp r'TiinnTn v . rr. rur 

:^„: _: ns. — I sneak of ibr : : _: — rr; — 

IT' nb'Dse Di lite Adian-ic ccean: mdd rnaj be Trreci&d 
br lie "grinds and zhs ViL->t^ ' T?t "rerr arnznoas 

THT^bp ibe amiDspbsre mzcc _: — _ . \\~beii Eirr dzrk 

T-ryn-> ~-rncf =. come DT^er onr unnds an liiis snrjeci. "we 
- r " r Dni dingence in 

We iiExe bad sn m p di ibe bsi iessans of pnidence and 

rrw od^nr of gmfiii t . lii- pa i lt pr l the Q:>cirbies of kind- 
: -: . - - -■ ^ ^ _^^ ^ -2ie preserrer? of peace 

:— _ ~— --. ' -^-esTDCt pronied br ibese pure 

and a±mi-abie precep-s. And xhe greai foioder of ■me 
cirv jz ' ■ ' -\ - -' ' ■ -dien- a= ibe 

IJT'H I ipn: _ _ _ - - . - . - - _ ^^ g,.c£ier la- 

tber ra ik rr HniM v mged Them -wiih all ids -weigiit of 



Tiaan : ior sie ias had "JTrtp trpoEL line, and precepi upon 



SA^IUEL LORENZO KXAPP 159 

precept, in ever)- stage of her advancement. We have 
indeed much to keep us together as a nation. The 
memor}' of past sufferings is one bond of union, and 
should be a strong one. Our mutual wants, so easily 
supplied by each other, is also a bond of union. — To 
these should be added the pride of what we have done; 
the hopes of what we may hereafter do; the visions of 
glory that come flitting before us, whether we will or 
not; proud navies traversing every sea; impregnable 
fortresses stretched along our shores; learned men in 
cv'ery walk of literature and science; institutions of 
charity, piety, and the arts are springing up around us, 
among us, and for us, and our posterity — these, all 
these will crowd upon the mind of every patriot, and 
produce kindness, forbearance, toleration for little dif- 
ferences of opinion, for a slight dissimilarity of habits 
— and teach us to sacrifice some fretful prejudices; — 
and bring us out in the exercise of those virtues which 
secure national prosperity and happiness. 

There are many ingredients in our national elements 
that promise that we shall not early be dismembered : — 
we are a people of one language, and this has a wonder- 
ful influence in bringing about uniformity of thought 
and action. We now have, in a good degree, the same 
methods of instruction; we have in the higher degrees 
of intelligence the same science and the same literature ; 
and when rightly informed on the same subject, nearly 
the same feeling. This language of ours has been 
foimd capable of embalming the wisdom of the world ; 
it contains much that is original from the deep wehs 
of human thought; many things gathered from the 
spoils of time. This language is every hour extending 
its empire retrospectively through all the changes of 
earth and man, that time has witnessed. \\"hatever 
has been known is coming within the compass of the 



i6o NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

English tongue; other languages are bounded; ours is 
on the march from nation to nation, from continent to 
continent. This fact alone is a sufficient reason for us 
to conclude that we shall preserve the institutions and 
the religion of our ancestors. Now and then, our faith 
is shaken by some chilling breath of infernal philosophy, 
that comes sweeping over these time-hallowed institu- 
tions, and for a while threatening their destruction. 
This poisonous essence assumes all shapes, from the 
wily serpent who seduced the mother of the human race 
to pluck the forbidden fruit, to that of the bearded sage 
in the sanctity of wisdom; in the form of popular elo- 
quence it is instilled into the mind of youth. The task 
of unhinging the virtues and the hopes of the world, is 
not confined to age or sex. There have been enchan- 
tresses and syrens in every age and nation to allure 
and to destroy the fool. Ravished by the first glance, 
he sees only that part that is beautiful — their deformi- 
ties to "young eyed wonder," are concealed by a cloud 
which arises from himself. Fully seen, these teachers, 
like Sin, would be hideous — 

"Before the gates there sat 

On either side a formidable shape; 
The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair, 
But ended foul in many a scaly fold, 
Voluminous and vast ; a serpent arm'd 
With mortal sting." 

These reformers would remodel your seminaries of 
learning; would raze your churches to the ground; 
stay the priests of the Lord; break up the sacrament, 
or holy bond of marriage; pluck from our hearts the 
charities of life; obliterate the endearing names of fa- 
ther, son, and brother, with all their charming alliances ; 
and substitute for it, a cold, spurious philosophy, under 



SAMUEL LORENZO KNAPP 16 1 

the specious names of social systems and general phi- 
lanthropy. But it would be weakness to keep our eyes 
fixed on this little dark spot. It is wise to watch the 
growth of it ; but it would not be pious or brave to be- 
lieve that it would ever overshadow the land. Cast 
your eye over the whole country; do you not see the 
best of hearts and the most powerful minds engaged in 
the best of causes; in building seminaries of learning; 
erecting edifices to God ; in teaching every class of our 
citizens their rights, their duties, their hopes? And 
these active, benevolent operations are not confined to 
our own country and people, but the remotest lands have 
not only our best wishes, but our best exertions. Our 
emissaries of charity and religion have gone out from 
us into all lands, and manifold blessings have flowed 
and will flow from it. Besides the good the mission- 
aries may do in diffusing the knowledge of the scrip- 
tures to those who have not heard the glad tidings of 
salvation, they will acquire a stock of information in 
geography and statistics, which when brought home 
and spread before us, will be invaluable. The know- 
ledge of the various languages these missionaries will 
acquire, and have acquired, will give a beauty and an 
expansion to our departments of the humanities un- 
known before: for in our best seminaries they have 
heretofore been mostly confined to Latin, Greek, and 
Hebrew. 

It is a pleasant reflection, that we have sent mission- 
aries to remote isles of the ocean, and to the farthest 
East, and that Greece has been cheered and sustained 
by some from among us, in the most perilous hour of 
her conflict, when she was bleeding at every pore, and 
her heart was bursting at the neglect of nations; but 
this is but a small part of the story — for Greece is now 
receiving light and knowledge from schools set up by 



1 62 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

the pious and benevolent of this country. How won- 
derful the revolution, that our system of public schools 
should at this hour be rising into notice on the precise 
spot where Socrates, Plato, and their successors, taught 
their lovely theories in the loveliest language that man 
ever formed, or God ever vouchsafed to give to those 
made in his image. 

We are paying, by small instalments, the great debt 
the world has long owed the Greeks. The Greek torch 
has supplied the kindling spark for all the altars of 
learning in the world for two thousand years, passing 
from hand to hand, from nation to nation; but it had 
long ceased to blaze on their own crumbling fanes ; and 
once again lighted up there by republican and Christian 
priests, it may burn as pure and bright as it did when 
Sappho sung, or when Demosthenes fulmined over the 
land. 

With all these labors of benevolence and philan- 
thropy, of heart and mind, with every sentinel upon the 
watch tower of our liberties, with a thousand presses at 
work disseminating knowledge, how can we go back to 
ignorance and anarchy? Shall it be said in after ages, 
that avarice and vulgar ambition had seized upon and 
corroded the heart, and destroyed the life-blood of the 
republic? Forbid it national pride, forbid it moral 
principle, forbid it merciful heaven — for there are more 
than five, aye, more than fifty righteous in the city, 
and many fathers of the faithful, reasoning humbly, but 
fervently, with the Most High, that the country should 
be spared. In the repeated "horrors of great dark- 
ness," when apathy has fallen upon the land, does not 
a covenant with God grow out of them? When these 
alms, and these prayers like the Centurion's, go up to 
Heaven, is there not a voice from on high, saying, "fear 
not, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great rezvard?" 



• ""■■'■ "■-'^'■'^ ^-^^sm 



SAMUEL LORENZO KNAPP 163 

The flight of time reminds me, that I must return 
from these general views, and these wide-spread 
branches of my subject, and come again to the root of 
the matter — the Pilgrims and their descendants. I love 
my native land; in this I would not yield a jot to her 
most favored sons : yet, I am not so doating as to think 
her without faults. What people ever existed with- 
out them ? But it would be out of place to name them 
here — and the few they have, are, to my mind, rather 
errors of reasoning than of principle. These are easily 
corrected. 

It is said that New-Englanders are found every 
where. It is true, that the spirit of enterprise which 
marked the characters of their fathers is seen in them. 
They early began to emigrate; crossing the Connecti- 
cut, they settled Vermont — the youngest branch of the 
present family; and proceeding onwards, they reached 
the Genesee, skirted the Lakes, clustered on the Ohio; 
and from thence, spread far and wide; then descended 
the Mississippi to New-Orleans; then returned and 
explored every tributary stream of that Queen of the 
Rivers, and planted on their borders the seeds of civili- 
zation. Wherever they built cabins, something of skill 
and comfort was to be found ; wherever they made what 
they considered as a permanent residence, industry, neat- 
ness, and thrift, were visible, and wherever they reared 
their children, they brought teachers of elementary 
learning to instruct them. Wherever they were greeted 
with kindness, they reciprocated it, in good faith ; when- 
ever they met with prejudice, they overcame it by a 
steady adherence to courteous demeanor, and fair deal- 
ing. They often, without forming clans, acted in con- 
cert. By the same course of reasoning, they honestly 
came to the same results. They never cherished, how- 
ever far removed from home, any of that home-sickness 



i64 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

of an exiled peasant, who mourns over what he has left, 
incapable of finding resources within himself for hap- 
piness, or of devising plans in which the past could, in 
a measure, be absorbed in the future. 

The New- England emigrant is every where an active 
being, deeply interested in every thing around him, 
making arrangements for the present, and calculations 
for unborn ages; but still if you search his heart you 
will find the love of his birthplace deeply engraven on 
it; follow the wandering of his imagination, and you 
will discover that he revisits the scenes of his childhood, 
and even in his dreams returns to his kindred and 
friends with true delight. This is all right; these 
glimpses of our native land, instead of weakening our 
affections for the places of our adoption, increase and 
strengthen them. To do all that is incumbent as citi- 
zens, and feel all that becomes us as sons, is uniting 
duty with feeling, and affection with principle. New- 
Englanders, wherever they may be, will show that they 
were born for others as well as themselves; that they 
were educated for no particular place, but belong to 
society and mankind. 



ADDRESS 

LEONARD BACON 

1838 



LEONARD BACON 
(1802-1881.) 

The speaker for 1838 was that commanding figure among the 
clergy, Dr. Leonard Bacon. As a youth of twenty-three he had 
been called to the First Congregational Church of New Haven, 
a church made perhaps the foremost in New England by the 
great pastorates of Moses Stuart and Nathaniel Taylor. Leon- 
ard Bacon rose to a unique though informal position as leader 
in a denomination which owns no head, but before that he was 
prominent in all local matters touching public morality, and 
was known as a temperance worker when even his moderate, 
though definite and courageous, views called down obloquy. 
From his student days he was active in that cause wherein his 
power was to be the widest. While at Andover he wrote and 
worked for the Colonization Society, standing by it till con- 
vinced it could not solve the problem of slavery. Then, when 
the pulpit of the North was silent or wavering, he took that 
difficult position between the ultra-conservatives on the one 
hand and the abolitionists on the other. With Drs. Thompson 
and R. S. Storrs as associates, he founded the "Independent," 
in 1848, as an organ for uncompromising views on this ques- 
tion. For this and for other periodicals he wrote, constantly, 
articles of masterly English, telling wit, and polemical power. 
Of the volume "Sermons on Slavery," Mr. Lincoln said that to 
it he owed much in the forming of his final opinions on this 
subject. 

In 1866, after forty years of service. Dr. Bacon deemed it best 
for his church that he resign his pastorate. His people, how- 
ever, made him pastor emeritus, which office he held till his 
death, often at their desire taking upon him active pastoral 
work. After his resignation he filled the chair of Doctrinal 
Theology in the Yale Seminary, and later those of Church Polity 
and American Church History. On the latter topic there was 
no one better prepared. 



LEONARD BACON 167 

Though born in Michigan, where his father, Rev. David Bacon, 
the first worker under the Connecticut Missionary Society, was 
stationed, Dr. Bacon was of Puritan blood, and while yet a 
lad he came to dwell in Hartford. His education was gained at 
two of New England's greatest institutions. The church to 
which his life work was given was the foundation stone of 
New Haven. Aside from these influences, he must have inher- 
ited from his father an intense interest in the beginnings of 
New England. David Bacon was one of the settlers of Tal- 
madge, in the Connecticut Reserve. He planned the town in 
detail, on the scheme of the Puritan plantations, and so it still 
exists, now grown to a model and thriving township. The ad- 
dress given on the Forefathers' Day celebration was made just 
after the publication of the notable "Thirteen Historical Dis- 
courses" on the two hundredth anniversary of the settlement 
of New Haven, and shows, as do these, the student of history, 
with not a trace of Dr. Bacon's other qualities— those of 
the intrepid man of action, the eloquent advocate, and the fiery 
debater. Among his published works, one other on this topic, 
"The Genesis of the New England Church," and among his 
hymns that beginning, 

"Oh God, beneath thy guiding hand 
Our exiled fathers crossed the sea," 

were born of this enthusiasm for the settlers of New England. 



ADDRESS 



Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the New England 
Society: 

IT would be easy for me to exhaust my time and your 
patience with preambles and apologies. But I throw 
myself at once upon your indulgence. In calling me 
to speak on this occasion, as a New England man, 
you have called me to the New England privilege of 
speaking my mind ; and the brief period which the late- 
ness of your invitation has allowed me for preparation, 
is a pledge that you will receive with kindness the 
materials of discourse which I have been able to col- 
lect, rather than arrange and combine, from among the 
results of previous studies. If my discourse seems long, 
you will remember that "I have not had time to make it 
short," and will therefore hear me with such patience as 
becomes the descendants of men who were wont to sit 
without weariness till the preacher, after the last sands 
had fallen, turned the hourglass, and entered on the 
second hour. 

First, let us revive our recollections of the causes 
which led to the settlement of New England, and which 
gave to the New England colonies a shape, constitu- 
tion and spirit, altogether peculiar. Afterwards we 
may proceed to some considerations and statements, 
tending to exhibit in a just light the character of the 

169 



I/O NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

founders of New England, and the civil polity which 
they established. 

When America was discovered by the Spaniards, the 
tropical regions, from Mexico to Brazil, enjoying a cli- 
mate without any winter, rich in all the natural means 
of subsistence and enjoyment, abounding in gold and 
silver and precious stones, adorned in some places with 
temples and palaces and populous cities, and inhabited 
by nations whose half-armed effeminacy, could offer no 
effectual resistance to the strength of European war- 
riors, clad in iron, and equipped with the terrific im- 
plements of modern warfare, presented such a field as 
was never before opened to human rapacity. In a few 
years, the Spanish monarchy, by invasion and violence, 
by cruelty and treachery, had become possessed of vast 
provinces and rich dependent kingdoms in America. 
Portugal, then one of the most considerable powers of 
Christendom, had at the same time laid the foundations 
of her great western empire. What effect the planting 
of such colonies, founded in rapine, and moulded by the 
combined influences of Popery in religion and despot- 
ism in government, has had on the progress of the 
world in freedom, knowledge, and happiness, I need 
not show in detail. Those colonies and conquests 
poured back indeed upon the parent empires, broad 
streams of wealth; and Spain and Portugal with their 
possessions in the west, were for a few short ages the 
envy of the world. But all prosperity, whether of in- 
dividuals or of nations, that does not spring from hon- 
est industry and from the arts of peace, brings curses 
in its train. The wealth which Spain and Portugal 
derived from their possessions in America has been 
their ruin. And from the hour in which they, weak 
and paralyzed, were no longer able to retain their grasp 
upon their American provinces — from the hour in 



LEONARD BACON 171 

which the various countries from Mexico to Brazil be- 
came independent, what a sea of anarchy has been toss- 
ing its waves over those wide realms, so gorgeous with 
the lavished wealth of nature. It may even be doubted 
whether there is, at this hour, in Mexico or in Peru, a 
more stable and beneficent government, or a more nu- 
merous, comfortable and virtuous population, than there 
was before the atrocious conquests of Cortez and Pi- 
zarro. What substantial benefit has accrued to the 
world from the planting of Spanish colonies in Amer- 
ica? What, beyond the benefit of having one more 
illustration, on the grandest scale, of the truth so often 
illustrated in history, that to nations, as to individuals, 
the wages of crime is death. 

The success of Spain, and the reports of adventurers 
who came back to Europe enriched with spoils, excited 
the cupidity of other nations to similar enterprises. 
England, among the rest, was ambitious to have tribu- 
tary provinces in the new world, from which gold and 
gems should come, to fill the treasury of her king, and 
to augment the riches and splendor of her nobility. 
One expedition after another was planned and under- 
taken, in the hope of acquiring some country which 
should be to England, what Mexico and Peru had been 
to Spain. And when in consequence of successive 
and most discouraging failures, such hopes began to be 
abandoned; and plans of colonization, and cultivation, 
and rational commerce, had succeeded to dreams of 
romantic conquest and adventure — when commercial 
companies with royal grants and charters, actuated by 
ordinary commercial motives, attempted to establish 
settlements in North Carolina and Virginia, and upon 
the bleak coast of Maine, the disappointments and dis- 
asters which ensued, demonstrated that another call, 
and another sort of charter, and other and higher im- 



172 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

pulses were necessary to success. Commercial enter- 
prise, cheered by royal patronage, and availing itself 
of the genius of Raleigh and the adventurous energy 
of Smith, sent forth its expeditions without success. 
The wilderness and the solitary place would not be 
glad for them, and it seemed as if the savage was to 
roam over these wilds forever. 

But the fullness of time was advancing. Other 
causes, the working of which was obvious to all, but 
the tendency of which no human mind had conjec- 
tured, were operating to secure for religion, for free- 
dom, and for science too, their fairest home, and the 
field of their brightest achievements. 

The reformation from Popery, which Wycliffe at- 
tempted in the fourteenth century, and for which Huss 
and Jerome of Prague were martyrs in the fifteenth, 
was successfully begun by Luther in Germany, and by 
Zwingle in Switzerland, about the year 15 17 — twenty- 
five years after the discovery of America. The minds 
of men having been prepared beforehand, not only by 
the writings of Wycliffe and the martyrdom of Huss 
and Jerome, but also by the new impulse and indepen- 
dence which had been given to thought in consequence 
of the revival of learning then in progress, and by the 
excitement which the discovery of a new world, and of 
new paths and regions for commerce, had spread over 
Europe ; and the invention of printing having provided 
a new instrumentality for the diffusion of knowledge 
and the promotion of free inquiry — only a few years 
elapsed from the time when Luther in the university 
of Wittemberg, and Zwingle in the cathedral of Zurich, 
made their first efforts, before all Europe was convulsed 
with the progress of a great intellectual and moral 
emancipation. 

The reformation was essentially the assertion of the 



LEONARD BACON 173 

right of individual thought and opinion, founded on the 
doctrine of individual responsibility. Popery puts the 
consciences of the laity into the keeping of the priest- 
hood. To the priest you are to confess your sins ; from 
him you are to receive penance and forgiveness; he is 
to be responsible for you, if you do as he bids you; to 
him you are to commit the guidance and government 
of your soul, with implicit submission. Life and im- 
mortality are only in the sacraments which he dispenses ; 
death and eternal despair are in his malediction. You 
are to do what he enjoins ; you are to believe what he 
teaches; he is accountable to God — you are account- 
able to him. The reformation, on the contrary, puts the 
Bible into every man's hand, and bids him believe, not 
what the priesthood declares, not what the Church de- 
crees, but what God reveals. It tells him, "Here is 
God's word; and for your reception or rejection of it, 
you are individually and directly accountable to God." 
Thus it was that from the beginning — though princes 
and statesmen did not always so regard it — the cause 
of the reformation was every where essentially the 
cause of freedom ; of manly thought, and bold inquiry ; 
of popular improvement ; of universal education. When 
religion, instead of being an affair between man and 
his priest, becomes an affair between man and his God ; 
the dignity of man as man at once outshines the dignity 
of pontiffs and of kings. By the doctrine of the ref- 
ormation, men though fallen and miserable in their 
native estate, are yet, in the estate to which they are 
raised as redeemed by Christ, as emancipated by the 
truth, and as anointed by the Holy Spirit — "kings and 
priests unto God." 

In England — always to be named with reverential 
affection as the father-land of our fathers — the seeds of 
truth and spiritual freedom, sown by Wycliffe a hun- 



174 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

dred and fifty years before Luther's time, were never 
entirely extirpated. And when Germany and Switzer- 
land began to be agitated with the great discussions of 
the reformation, men were soon found in England, who 
sympathized with the reformers, and secretly or openly 
adopted their principles. But in that country, peculiar 
circumstances gave to the reformation of the national 
Church a peculiar form and aspect. 

The English king at that period was Henry VIII. 
He was, for a prince, uncommonly well educated in the 
scholastic learning of the age; and not long after the 
commencement of the reformation, he signalized him- 
self, and obtained from the Pope the honorary title of 
"Defender of the Faith," by writing a Latin volume in 
confutation of the heresies of Luther. But afterwards, 
wishing to put away his wife on account of some pre- 
tended scruple of conscience, and not being able to 
obtain a divorce by the authority of the Pope, who had 
strong political reasons for evading a compliance with 
his wishes, he quarreled with the Pope, (1529,) and 
began to reform after a fashion of his own. Without 
renouncing any doctrine of the Romish Church, he 
declared the Church of England independent of the 
see of Rome; he assumed all ecclesiastical power into 
his own hands, making himself head of the Church ; he 
confiscated the lands and treasures of the monasteries ; 
he brought the bishops into an abject dependence on 
his power ; he exercised the prerogative of allowing or 
restraining at his pleasure the circulation and use of 
the Scriptures ; and, with impartial fury, he persecuted 
those who adhered to the Pope, and those who abjured 
the errors of Popery. The religion of the Church of 
England, under his administration, was Popery, with 
the king for Pope. 

During the short reign of Edward VI, (1547,) or 



riM 



LEONARD BACON i75 

rather of the regents who governed England in his 
name, the king himself being under age, the reforma- 
tion of the English Church was commenced with true 
good will, and carried forward as energetically and 
rapidly as was consistent with discretion. Thus when 
the bloody Queen Mary succeeded to the throne, (1553,) 
and attempted to restore, by sword and faggot, the an- 
cient superstition, hundreds were found who followed 
the protomartyr Rogers, and like him sealed their tes- 
timony at the stake; and hundreds more, of ministers 
and other intelligent and conscientious men, having the 
opportunity of flight, found refuge for a season in the 
various Protestant countries of the continent. At the 
places at which these exiles were hospitably received, 
and particularly at Geneva, they became familiar with 
forms of worship, and of discipline, more completely 
purified from Popery, as they thought, than the forms 
which had as yet been adopted or permitted in their 
native country. Among the English exiles in the city 
of Frankfort, who had the privilege of uniting in public 
worship in their own language, there arose a difference 
of opinion. Some were for a strict conformity of their 
public services to the order which had been established 
in England under King Edward, while others consid- 
ered themselves at liberty to lay aside every thing which 
savored of superstition, and to imitate the simplicity 
which characterized the reformed Churches around 
them. These were denominated by their adversaries, 
"Puritans;" and the dispute at Frankfort in the year 
1554, is commonly regarded by historians as marking 
the beginning of the Puritan party. 

When the reign of Queen Elizabeth commenced, 
(1558,) the exiles returned, expecting that a princess 
educated in the Protestant faith, whose title to the 
throne was identified with the Protestant cause, would 



176 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

energetically carry forward the reformation which had 
been begun under the reign of her brother, but which 
by his premature death had been left confessedly im- 
perfect. This expectation was disappointed. The new 
Queen was more the daughter of Henry than the sister 
of Edward. She seemed to dislike nothing of Popery 
but its inconsistency with her title to the throne, and its 
claims against her ecclesiastical supremacy. 

Those ministers who, in any particular, neglected to 
conform to the prescribed ceremonies and observances, 
were called "Non-conformists ;" and though their non- 
conformity was sometimes connived at by this or that 
more lenient bishop, and sometimes went unpunished 
because of the danger of exciting popular odium, every 
such minister was always liable to be suspended or 
silenced ; and many of them, though the ablest and most 
efficient preachers in the kingdom, at a time when not 
more than one out of four of the clergy could preach 
at all,^ were forbidden to preach, and were deprived of 
all their employments. 

The Puritans, it will be remembered, were not a 
secession from the Church of England ; they were only 
that party within the Church, which demanded a more 
thorough reformation. Their hopes as a party were 
kept alive, not only by the consciousness that the force 
of argument was on their side, with no inferiority in 
respect to talents and learning; but partly by the grow- 
ing popularity of their opinions ; partly by the favor of 
those politic and far-seeing statesmen, who, so far as 
the Queen's willfulness would permit, controlled her 
government by their counsels ; and partly by the pros- 
pect that the Queen's successor on the throne might 
be himself a Puritan. 

James Stuart, King of Scotland, became King of 
^Hallam, Constitutional History of England, I, 270. 



LEONARD BACON 177 

England on the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603. As 
he had reigned over a kingdom thoroughly reformed, 
and had been educated under influences favorable to 
the simplest and strictest forms of the Protestant re- 
ligion, and had often professed in the most solemn man- 
ner a hearty attachment to those forms, it was hoped, 
notwithstanding his known instability of character and 
his fondness for the pomp and forms of kingly power, 
that he might be inclined to bring the ecclesiastical 
state of England, in its discipline and worship, nearer 
the pattern of the reformed Churches. Accordingly 
while he was on his way to the metropolis of his new 
kingdom, he was met with a petition signed by more 
than eight hundred ministers of the Church of England, 
praying for the reformation of certain particulars in 
worship and discipline, but not aimed at all against the 
principle of prelacy, or the principle of prescribed forms 
of public prayer. Not one of the least of these requests 
was granted ; on the contrary, the Puritans soon found 
that the chances of hereditary succession had placed 
over them as their king, a low minded, vainglorious, 
pedantic fool, to whom the more than oriental adula- 
tion with which courtly prelates fawned upon him, was 
dearer than the honor of God and the welfare of the 
people. A specimen of what they might expect under 
his reign was given, in the imprisonment of ten of the 
ministers who had presented the reasonable and moder- 
ate petition for reform — the offense of presenting such 
a petition having been declared in the Star-chamber to 
be "fineable at discretion, and very near to treason and 
felony, as it tended to sedition and rebellion," ^ — a pre- 
cedent which, it may be hoped, will not be imitated in 
these days. 

From such persecution, pious and resolute men who 
^Hallam, I, 406. 



178 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

loved liberty and purity even more than they loved their 
native soil, soon began to retreat into other countries. 
Some had begun to separate themselves professedly 
from the Church of England, as despairing of its ref- 
ormation, and to organize themselves independently of 
the civil state, framing their ecclesiastical institutions 
according to their own understanding of the word of 
God. A small congregation of such persons, "finding 
by experience that they could not peaceably enjoy their 
own liberty in their native country," removed with their 
families from the north of England into Holland, and 
in the year 1610 settled themselves in the city of Ley- 
den; "and there," in the language of one of them, 
"they continued divers years in a comfortable condi- 
tion, enjoying much sweet society and spiritual comfort 
in the ways of God ;" "having for their pastor Mr. 
John Robinson, a man of a learned, polished and mod- 
est spirit, pious, and studying of the truth, largely ac- 
complished with spiritual gifts and qualifications to 
be a shepherd over this flock of Christ; having also a 
fellow helper with him in the eldership, Mr. William 
Brewster, a man of approved piety, gravity and sincer- 
ity, very eminently furnished with gifts suitable to such 
an office." ^ 

This little Church, after a few years' residence in 
Holland, finding that in the city of strangers where 
they were so hospitably received, they labored under 
many disadvantages, especially in regard to the educa- 
tion of their children, and moved also by "a great hope 
and inward zeal they had of laying some good foun- 
dation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for 
the propagating and advancement of the kingdom of 
Christ;" "yea, although they should be but as stepping 
stones unto others for the performance of so great a 
^ Morton's Memorial. 



lA^i^rftf^rfMtijBi 



LEONARD BACON i79 

work," — determined on a removal to America; and on 
the 22d of December, 1620, one hundred of the Ley- 
den Pilgrims, inckiding men, women, and little children, 
landed from the Mayflower, on the rock of Plymouth. 
Then first the ark of God rested upon the soil of New 
England, and made it "holy ground." Let the annual 
return of that wintry day be bright in the hearts of 
the sons of New England, 

"Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay, 
Shall foam and freeze no more." 

Meanwhile the Puritans in England were striving 
and suffering in vain. Reluctant, for the most part, to 
admit the idea of separation from the national Church, 
they waited and prayed, and struggled to obtain a more 
perfect reformation. Their cause grew in favor with 
the people and with the Parliament, for it was felt to 
be the cause of Protestantism, of sobriety and godli- 
ness, and of civil liberty. But the monarch, and those 
dependent creatures of the monarch, the prelates, ap- 
pointed by his pleasure, and accountable to him alone, 
were steady in the determination to have no reform 
and to enforce submission. Five years after the settle- 
ment of Plymouth, King James was succeeded by his 
son Charles I, who with more gravity and respectability 
of personal character than belonged to his father, pur- 
sued the same despotic policy, in the Church, and in 
the civil state, which made his father odious, as well 
as contemptible. His principal adviser was William 
Laud, a narrow minded and bitter enemy of all who 
desired any farther reformation in ecclesiastical disci- 
pline, a systematic corrupter of the established doc- 
trines of the Church, a superstitious promoter of pomp 
and ceremony in religion, more a friend to Rome than 



i8o NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

to Geneva or to Augsburg, a hater of popular rights 
and of the ancient Hberties and common law of Eng- 
land, and the constant adviser of all arbitrary methods 
of government. This man, being made bishop of Lon- 
don, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, and 
having the king almost absolutely under his control, 
brought the despotic powers of the Star-chamber and 
of the High Commission Court to bear with new ter- 
rors, not only u^Don non-conforming clergymen, but 
upon men of other professions who dared to express an 
opinion in favor of reformation. 

In these circumstances, the same spirit that had led 
the Pilgrims of Leyden to Plymouth, led others, in 
greater numbers, and with more adequate means, to at- 
tempt the establishment of religious colonies in Amer- 
ica. Eight years after the settlement of Plymouth, the 
colony of Massachusetts Bay was commenced by En- 
dicott and his company at Salem; and in 1630, Boston 
and the surrounding towns were occupied by the illus- 
trious Winthrop and the hundreds of emigrants who 
followed him. In 1635, the first beginnings were made 
on the Connecticut river, at Plartford and at Saybrook ; 
in 1636, Roger Williams opened at Providence his 
"refuge for all sorts of consciences;" and in 1638, 
another independent colony was commenced at New 
Haven. 

Thus it was that New England was planted. The 
planting of North America upon merely mercenary and 
selfish principles had been attempted once and again, 
and had failed. Our fathers and predecessors came 
under the influence of higher motives, and of a holier 
inspiration. They came, actuated by a great and sub- 
lime idea, — an idea from the word and mind of God, — 
an idea that made them courageous to attempt, wise to 
plan, strong to suffer, and dauntless to persevere. Their 



LEONARD Bx\CON i8i 

souls were exalted to a perception of the grandeur of 
their undertaking and of the vast results that were sus- 
pended on its success. They were inspired by a living 
sympathy with the designs of that Almighty Provi- 
dence, which led them into this boundless wilderness, 
that for them the wilderness and the solitary place 
might be glad, and the desert rejoice abundantly with 
joy and singing. Thus they could write upon their 
banners those words of Puritan faith and devotion, 'Tn 
God we hope," "He who transplanted us, sustains us." 

Two points in the civil polity instituted by the found- 
ers of the several New England colonies, have been the 
subjects of sharp censure, and of ridicule not always 
quite so sharp, on the part of those who have not duly 
considered the character of that age, and the circum- 
stances in which that polity was instituted. I refer 
here to these two principles — first, that in the choice 
of magistrates, the making and repealing of laws, the 
dividing of inheritances, and the deciding of differences, 
all should be governed by the rules held forth in Scrip- 
ture; and, secondly, that a man's Christian character, 
certified by the Church in the fact of his being a church 
member, should be essential, not to his enjoying civil 
rights and privileges, but to his exercising civil power. 
The adoption of such principles as the basis of their 
civil polity, is considered as proving beyond all dispute 
that the New England colonists were ignorant bigots 
and wild fanatics. 

If you believe the Bible to be a perfect rule of moral 
action, you are precluded from taking any exception 
against the first of these principles, as it has just been 
stated in the words of an ancient record. If you do 
not believe in the Bible as a rule of moral action, I 
confess I am not careful at present to answer you at 
all in this matter. The principle as it stands is simply 



1 82 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

that Christianity — the ethics of Christianity, should be 
the constitution of the commonwealth, the supreme law 
of the land. 

But give the principle another construction. Take 
it as it is commonly understood, and as it was actually 
applied in practice. In 1644, it was ordered by the 
General Court of the New Haven jurisdiction, (and the 
same principle was acted upon in the other colonies,) 
"that the judicial laws of God as they were delivered 
by Moses, and as they are a fence to the moral law, 
being neither typical nor ceremonial, nor having any 
reference to Canaan, shall be accounted of moral equity, 
and generally bind all offenders, and be a rule to all the 
courts in this jurisdiction in their proceedings against 
offenders, till they be branched out into particulars 
hereafter." Take this adoption of the civil laws of the 
Hebrew commonwealth, about which malicious hearts 
and shallow brains have so employed their faculties; 
and what is there in this, that should make us ashamed 
of our fathers? — what that proves them to be fanatics 
or bigots? 

Remember now that, situated as they were, they 
must adopt either the laws of England or some other 
known system. A system entirely new, they could 
not frame immediately. Should they then adopt the 
laws of England as the laws of their young republic? 
Those were the very laws from which they had fled. 
Those laws would subject them at once to the king, to 
the parliament, and to the prelates, in their several 
jurisdictions. The adoption of the laws of England 
would have been fatal to the object of their emigration. 
Should they then adopt the Roman civil law, which is 
the basis of the jurisprudence of most countries in Eu- 
rope? That system is foreign to the genius of Eng- 
lishmen, and to the spirit of freedom, and besides, was 



LEONARD BACON 183 

unknown to the body of the people for whom laws were 
to be provided. What other course remained to them, 
if they wished to separate themselves from the power 
of the enemies who had driven them into banishment, 
and to provide for a complete and vital independence, 
but to adopt at once a system of laws which was in 
every man's hand, which every man read, and as he 
was able, expounded in his family, and with which 
every subject of the jurisdiction could easily be made 
familiarly acquainted. 

But what was there of absurdity in this code, consid- 
ered as a code for just such a settlement as this was? 
Where are we, that we need raise such a question? 
Is it in a Christian country, that the question must be 
argued, whether the Mosaic law, excluding whatever is 
typical, or ceremonial, or local, is absurd, as the basis 
or beginning of a system of jurisprudence? Suppose 
the planters of the New England colonies had taken as 
their rule, in the administration of justice, the laws of 
Solon, or Lycurgus, or the laws of the twelve tables : 
suppose the agreement had been, that the laws of King 
Alfred should be followed in the punishment of offend- 
ers, in the settlement of controversies between individ- 
uals, and in the division of estates : — where had been 
the absurdity? Who will tell us, that the laws of 
Moses are less wise or equitable than the laws of any 
other of the legislators of antiquity? 

The laws of Moses were given to a community emi- 
grating from their native country, into a land which 
they were to acquire and occupy, for the great purpose 
of maintaining in simplicity and purity the worship of 
the one true God. The founders of New Engl?*;a came 
hither for the self-same purpose. Their emigration 
from their native country was a religious emigration. 
Every other interest of their community was held sub- 



1 84 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ordinate to the purity of their religious faith and prac- 
tice. So far then as this point of comparison is con- 
cerned, the laws which were given to Israel in the 
wilderness may have been suited to the wants of a reli- 
gious colony planting itself in America. 

The laws of Moses were given to a people who were 
to live not only surrounded by heathen tribes on every 
frontier save the seaboard, but also with heathen inhabi- 
tants, worshipers of the devil, intermixed among them, 
not fellow citizens, but men of another and barbarous 
race; and the laws were therefore framed with a spe- 
cial reference to the corrupting influence of such neigh- 
borhood and intercourse. Similar to this was the con- 
dition of our fathers. The Canaanite was in the land, 
with his barbarian vices, with his heathenish and hid- 
eous superstitions ; and their servants and children were 
to be guarded against the contamination of intercourse 
with beings so degraded. 

The laws of the Hebrews were designed for a free 
people. Under those laws, so unlike all the institutions 
of oriental despotism, there was no absolute power, and, 
with the exception of the hereditary priesthood, whose 
privileges as a class were well balanced by their labors 
and disabilities, no privileged classes. The aim of those 
laws was "equal and exact justice;" and equal and ex- 
act justice is the only freedom. Equal and exact jus- 
tice in the laws, and in the administration of the laws, 
infuses freedom into the being of a people, secures the 
widest and most useful distribution of the means of en- 
joyment, and afifords scope for the activity, and health- 
ful stimulus to the affections, of every individual. The 
people whose habits and sentiments are formed under 
such an administration of justice, will be a free people. 

But it is worth our while to notice two of the most 
important effects of their renouncing the laws of Eng- 



LEONARD BACON 185 

land, and adopting the Mosaic law. In the first place, 
the principle on which inheritances were to be divided, 
was materially changed. The English law, except 
where some local usage prevails to the contrary, gives 
all real estate to the eldest son. This is the pillar of 
the English aristocracy. Let this one principle be taken 
away ; let estates, instead of passing undivided to a sin- 
gle heir, be divided among many heirs, and that vast 
accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few great 
families is at an end. But the Jewish law divides in- 
heritances among all the children, giving to the eldest 
son, as the head of the family, only a double portion. 
This promotes equality among the people, breaking up 
the rich man's great estate into as many portions as he 
has children, and thus insuring the constant division 
and general distribution of property. How different is 
the aspect of this country now, from what it would have 
been, if the feudal law of inheritance had been from the 
beginning the law of the land ! How incalculable has 
been the effect on the character of the people ! 

Notice in the next place, how great a change in re- 
spect to the inflicting of capital punishments, was made 
by adopting the Hebrew laws, instead of the laws of 
England. By the laws of England, not far from one 
hundred and fifty crimes were at that time punishable 
with death. By the laws which the New England col- 
onists adopted, this bloody catalogue was reduced to 
eleven.^ On such a difference as this, it would be idle 
to expatiate. In determining what kind of men our 
fathers were, we are to compare their laws, not with 
ours, but with the laws which they renounced. The 
greatest and boldest improvement which has been made 

^Murder, Treason, Perjury Adultery, Blasphemy in the 
against the life of another, Kid- highest degree, Idolatry, Witch- 
napping, Bestiality, Sodomy, craft. Rebellion against parents. 



1 86 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

in criminal jurisprudence, by any one act, since the 
dark ages, was that which was made by our fathers, 
when they determined, "that the judicial laws of God, 
as they were delivered by Moses, and as they are a 
fence to the moral law, being neither typical, nor cere- 
monial, nor having any reference to Canaan, shall be 
accounted of moral equity, and generally bind all of- 
fenders, and be a rule to all the courts." Whatever 
improvements in this respect we have made since their 
day, may be resolved into this : — we have learned to 
distinguish, better than they, between that in the laws of 
Moses which was of absolute obligation, being founded 
on permanent and universal reasons only, and that 
which was ordained in reference to the peculiar circum- 
stances of the Hebrew nation, and which was therefore 
temporary or local. 

So much for the first principle in the constitution 
adopted by the fathers of New England, namely, the 
principle that the Bible should be their rule of justice. 
As to the other principle, namely, that political power 
should be committed only to those men whose moral 
character, and whose sympathy with the great design 
of the plantation, should be certified by their being 
members of the Church, — one simple fact which the 
fathers knew right well, is its only vindication as a po- 
litical measure. They knew that as soon as they should 
have built their houses and got their lands under culti- 
vation, as soon as they should have enough of what was 
taxable and titheable to excite covetousness, the king 
would be sending over his needy profligates to govern 
them, and the archbishop his surpliced commissaries to 
gather the tithes into his storehouse. Knowing this, 
they were resolved to leave no door open for such an 
invasion. They came hither to establish a free Chris- 
tian commonwealth ; and, to secure that end, they de- 



LEONARD BACON 187 

termined, that in their commonwealth, none should have 
any civil power, who either would not, or could not, 
enter at the door of church fellowship. "They held 
themselves bound," they said, "to establish such civil 
order as might best conduce to the securing the purity 
and peace of the ordinances to themselves and their pos- 
terity." Was this fanatical ? Was this bigoted ? Place 
yourself in their circumstances, with their convictions 
of the importance of truth, simplicity, and purity, in the 
worship of God; and say what you could do more ra- 
tional or more manly? If we are to regard this provi- 
sion as a measure for the encouragement or promotion 
of piety, undoubtedly it must be pronounced a great 
mistake. Piety is not to be promoted by making it the 
condition of any civil or political distinctions. This 
they knew as well as we ; and when they introduced the 
principle in question, it was not for the sake of bestow- 
ing honors or privileges upon piety, but for the sake of 
guarding their liberty and securing the end for which 
they had made themselves exiles. If you call their 
adoption of this principle fanaticism, it is to be remem- 
bered that the same fanaticism runs through the history 
of England. How long has any man in England been 
permitted to hold any office under the crown, without 
being a communicant in the Church of England ? The 
self-same fanaticism had, up to that time, character- 
ized all nations, protestant or popish, Mohammedan or 
heathen; nay, as Davenport said, "these very Indians, 
that worship the devil," acted on the same principle, so 
that in his judgment "it seemed to be a principle im- 
printed in the minds and hearts of all men in the equity 
of it." ^ Call it fanaticism if you will. To that fanati- 
cism which threw off the laws of England, and made 
these colonies Puritan commonwealths, we are in- 
^ Discourse about Civil Government, 24. 



i88 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

debted for our existence as a distinct and independent 
nation. 

But after all, we may be told, these fathers of ours 
were Puritans; and this connection between the New 
England fathers and that fanatical party in their native 
country, shows what they were. Thus we come to an- 
other topic. Well, what and who were the Puritans? 
Need any man be ashamed of being descended from 
such ancestors ? 

There are those whose ideas of the Puritans are de- 
rived only from such authorities as Butler's Hudibras, 
Scott's romances, and similar fictions. There are those, 
still more unfortunate, who form their opinion of the 
character of the Puritans from what they read in such 
works as that most unscrupulous and malicious of lying 
narratives, Peters's History of Connecticut. With per- 
sons whose historical knowledge is of this description, 
it would be a waste of time to argue. But those who 
know any thing of the history of England, may easily 
disabuse themselves of vulgar prejudices against the 
Puritans. 

What were the Puritans? The prejudices which 
have been infused into so many minds from the light, 
popular literature of England since the restoration, are 
ready to answer. The Puritans ! — every body knows 
what they were ; — an enthusiastic religious sect, distin- 
guished by peculiarities of dress and language, enemies 
of learning, haters of refinement and all social enjoy- 
ments, low-bred fanatics, crop-eared rebels, a rabble of 
round-heads, whose preachers were cobblers and tin- 
kers, ever turning their optics in upon their own inward 
light, and waging fierce war upon mince pies and plum 
puddings. It was easy for the courtiers of King 
Charles II, when the men of what they called "the 
Grand Rebellion," had gone from the scene of action, 



LEONARD BACON 189 

thus to make themselves merry with misrepresentations 
of the Puritans, and to laugh at the wit of Butler and 
of South ; but their fathers laughed not, when, in many 
a field of conflict, the chivalry of England skipped like 
lambs, and proud banners rich with Norman heraldry, 
and emblazoned with bearings that had been stars of 
victory at Cressy and at Poictiers, were trailed in dust 
before the round-head regiments of Cromwell. 

What were the Puritans ? Let sober history answer. 
They were a great religious and political party, in a 
country and in an age in which every man's religion 
was a matter of political regulation. They were in 
their day the reforming party in the church and state 
of England. They were a party including, like all 
other great parties, religious or political, a great va- 
riety of character, and men of all conditions in society. 
There were noblemen among them, and there were 
peasants ; but the bulk of the party was in the mid- 
dling classes, the classes which the progress of com- 
merce and civilization, and free thought, had created 
between the degraded peasantry and the corrupt aristoc- 
racy. The strong holds of the party were in the great 
commercial towns, and especially among the merchants 
and tradesmen of the metropolis. There were doubt- 
less some hypocrites among them, and some men of 
unsettled opinions, and some of loose morals, and some 
actuated by no higher sentiment than party spirit, but 
the party as a whole was characterized by a devoted 
love of country, by strict and stern morality, by hearty 
fervent piety, and by the strongest attachment to sound, 
evangelical doctrines. There were ignorant men among 
them, and weak men ; but comparing the two parties as 
masses, theirs was the intelligent and thinking party. 
There were among them some men of low ambition, 
some of a restless, envious, leveling temper, some of 



190 XEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

narrow views ; but the party as a whole, was the patri- 
otic party, it stood for popular rights, for the liberties 
of England, for laAv against prerogative, for the doc- 
trine that kings and magistrates were made for the 
people, and not the people for kings — ministers for the 
Church, and not the Church for ministers. 

Who were the Puritans? Enemies of learning did 
you say? You have heard of Lightfoot, second in 
scholarship to no other man, whose researches into all 
sorts of lore are even at this day the great storehouse 
from which the most learned and renowned commenta- 
tors, not of England and America only, but of Ger- 
many, derive no insignificant portion of their learning. 
Lightfoot was a Puritan.^ You may have heard of 
Theophilus Gale, whose works have never yet been sur- 
passed for minute and laborious investigation into the 
sources of all the wisdom of the Gentiles. Gale was a 
Puritan. You may have heard of Owen, the fame of 
whose learning, not less than of his genius and his skill, 
filled all Europe, and constrained the most determined 
enemies of him. and of his party, to pay him the pro- 
foundest deference. Owen was, among divines, the 
very head and captain of the Puritans. You may have 
heard of Selden, the jurist, the universal scholar, whose 
learning was in his day, and is even at this day, the 
"glory of the English nation." Selden was a Puritan.^ 
Strange that such men should have been identified with 
the enemies of learning. 

The Puritans triumphed for a while. They beat 
down not only the prelacy, but the peerage, and the 

* Lightfoot was a member of members of the Westminster 

the Westminster Assembly of Assembly. He was one of the 

Divines. After the restoration. committee impeaching Laud, a 

he conformed to the Estab- noted juridic writer, and mas- 

lished Church. ter of Trinity Hall. Cambridge. 

' Selden was one of the lay 



LEONARD BACON 191 

throne. And what did they do with the universities? 
The universities were indeed revolutionized by com- 
missioners from the Puritan Parliament; and all who 
were enemies to the Commonwealth of England, as then 
established, were turned out of the seats of instruction 
and government. But were the revenues of the univer- 
sities confiscated? — their halls given up to pillage? — 
their libraries scattered and destroyed ? Never were the 
universities of England better regulated, never did they 
better answer the legitimate ends of such institutions, 
than when they were under the control of the Puritans. 

Who were the Puritans? Enemies, did you say, of 
literature and refinement? What is the most resplen- 
dent name in the literature of England? Name that 
most illustrious of poets, who for magnificence of im- 
agination, for grandeur of thought, for purity, beauty, 
and tenderness of sentiment, for harmony of numbers, 
for power and felicity of language, stands without a 
rival. Milton was a Puritan. 

Who were the low-bred fanatics, the crop-eared reb- 
els, the rabble of round-heads? Name that purest pa- 
triot whose name stands brightest and most honored in 
the history of English liberty, and whose example is 
ever the star of guidance and of hope, to all who resist 
usurped authority. Hampden was a Puritan, — asso- 
ciate with Pym in the eloquence that swayed the Par- 
liament and "fulmin'd" over England, comrade in 
arms with Cromwell, and shedding his blood upon the 
battle field. 

But their preachers were cobblers and tinkers! 
Were they indeed? Well, and what were Christ's 
apostles? One tinker I remember, among the preach- 
ers of that age, and of that great party — though not, 
in the most proper meaning of the word, a Puritan; 
and what name is more worthy of a place among the 



192 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

names of the elected fishermen of Galilee, than the 
name of Bunyan? That tinker, shut up in Bedford 
jail for the crime of preaching, saw there with the eye 
of faith and genius, visions only less divine than those 
which were revealed to his namesake in Patmos. His 
"Pilgrim's Progress" lives in all the languages of 
Christendom, among the most immortal of the works 
of human genius. Would that all preachers were gifted 
like that tinker Bunyan ! 

But the Puritan preachers cannot be characterized 
as illiterate, or as men who had been trained to mechan- 
ical employments. They were men from the univer- 
sities, skilled in the learning of the age, and well 
equipped for the work of preaching. Never has Eng- 
land seen a more illustrious company of preachers than 
when Baxter, Owen, Bates, Charnock, Howe, and two 
thousand others of inferior attainments indeed, but of 
kindred spirit, labored in the pulpits of the establish- 
ment. Never has any ministry in the Church of Eng- 
land done more, in the same time, and under similar 
disadvantages, for the advancement of the people in the 
knowledge of Christian truth, and in the practice of 
Christian piety, than was done by the ministry of the 
Puritans. Whence came the best and most famous of 
those books of devotion, and of experimental and prac- 
tical piety, which have so enriched our language, and 
by which the authors preach to all generations? The 
"Saint's Rest," the "Call to the Unconverted," the 
"Blessedness of the Righteous," the "Living Temple," 
these, and other works like these, which have been the 
means of leading thousands to God the eternal foun- 
tain, — are the works of Puritan preachers. 

Let me not be considered as maintaining that the 
Puritans were faultless and infallible. I know they 
had faults, great faults. I know they fell into serious 



LEONARD BACON 193 

errors. By their errors and faults, the great cause 
which their virtue so earnestly espoused, and their valor 
so strongly defended, was wrecked and almost ruined. 
But dearly did they pay, in disappointment, in perse- 
cution, in many sufferings, in the contempt which was 
heaped upon them by the infatuated people they had 
vainly struggled to emancipate, — the penalty of their 
faults and errors. And richly have their posterity, in- 
habiting both hemispheres, enjoyed, in well ordered lib- 
erty, in the diffusion of knowledge, and in the saving 
influences of pure Christianity, — the purchase of their 
sufferings, the reward of their virtues and their valor. 

But aside from the constitution of their civil polity, 
and their relation to the Puritans of England, there are 
other topics of invective and ridicule against those ven- 
erable men who planted the New England colonies, 
some of which must be noticed, though with the utmost 
brevity. 

Did these men believe in witchcraft ? Certainly they 
did. Probably they never called in question for a mo- 
ment, the then universal opinion of the reality of com- 
merce between human beings and the invisible powers 
of darkness. And shall they be set down as weak and 
credulous, because they did not throw off all the errors 
of the age? Shall the age in which they lived be 
deemed an age of extraordinary credulity, because it 
did not rid itself of prejudices and terrors which had 
been growing in the world ever since the flood ? Shall 
the age of animal magnetism and Maria Monk, take 
credit to itself because it does not believe in witchcraft? 

But I am asked again. Did not these good fathers of 
ours inflict punishment on the Quakers? I answer, 
They did, — we admit their error, and condemn it. 
They did not understand aright the great principles of 
universal religious freedom. They came hither for 



194 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

their own freedom and peace; and that freedom and 
peace they thought themselves authorized and bound to 
defend against all invaders. The Quakers, however, 
whom they punished, were not a sect rising up on the 
soil of New England, and claiming simply the right of 
separate worship and free discussion. They were in- 
vaders who came from Old England to New, for the 
sole and declared purpose of disturbance and revolu- 
tion. They came propagating principles which were 
understood to strike at the foundation not only of the 
particular religious and civil polity here established, 
but of all order and of society itself. In their manner 
of proceeding they outraged peace and order, openly 
cursing and reviling the faith and worship which the 
New Englanders had come to the world's end to enjoy 
in quietness, the magistrates venerable for wisdom and 
public spirit, and the ministers whose gifts and faith- 
fulness were esteemed the brightest glory of the land. 
They outraged the religious rights and freedom of those 
whom they came to enlighten, thrusting themselves into 
worshiping assemblies on the Lord's day and other 
occasions, and interrupting the worship or the sermon 
with their outcries of contradiction and cursing. They 
outraged natural decency itself; one of their women- 
preachers, Deborah Wilson by name, "went through 
the streets of Salem naked as she came into the 
world ;" ^ and in other instances, they came in the same 
plight into the public religious assemblies;^ and all to 
show by that sign the nakedness of other people's sins. 
I cannot doubt that such people — if indeed they were 
not too insane to be accountable for any thing — de- 
served to be punished, not for their opinions, but for 
their actions ; not for their exercising their own rights, 
but for their invading the rights of others ; not for their 
* Hutchinson, I, 204. "■ Mather, Magn., VII, 100. 



LEONARD BACON 195 

publication of offensive and even disorganizing doc- 
trines, but for their outrages on decorum, and their dis- 
turbances of the public peace. If we condemn our fa- 
thers in this matter, it should be not because they 
punished such offenders, but because they punished 
them for heresy. 

But let us compare the conduct of our ancestors in 
this very matter, with the conduct of some in our more 
enlightened and free thinking age. The real succes- 
sors of the Quakers of that day — the men who come 
nearest to those enthusiasts in their actual relations 
to the public — are not to be found in those orderly 
and thrifty citizens of Philadelphia, who are distin- 
guished from their fellow citizens in Chestnut Street, 
by a little more circumference of the hat, and a little 
peculiarity of grammar, and perhaps a little more 
quietness and staidness of manner. What we call 
Quakers in this generation, are no more like George 
Fox in his suit of leather, than the pomp and riches 
of an English Archbishop are like the poverty of an 
Apostle. Do you find these men going about like 
mad men, reviling magistrates, and all in authority, 
cursing ministers, and publishing doctrines that strike 
at the existence of all government? No, if you would 
find the true successors of the Quakers of 1650, you 
must look elsewhere. The Anti-slavery agitators of 
our day, are extensively regarded very much as the 
Quakers were regarded by our ancestors. Some of 
them execrate our constitution and our laws, and re- 
vile our magistrates, and utter all manner of reproach 
against our ministers and our churches. Some of them 
go about preaching doctrines which tend not only to 
the extinction of the "peculiar institutions" of one part 
of our country, and the subversion of our "glorious 
union," but to absolute and universal anarchy. We 



196 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

cannot indeed charge upon them every thing that was 
charged upon the ancient Quakers ; Mr. Garrison him- 
self has not yet put on the leather jerkin of George 
Fox; nor have we heard of his attempting, like Hum- 
phrey Norton, to break in with his ravings upon the 
solemn worship of a religious assembly on the Sabbath ; 
nor has Miss Grimke, or Miss Abby Kelly, set herself 
to testify against the sins of the people, in just the same 
style with Deborah Wilson. But they have published 
doctrines highly offensive to public opinion, and as is 
commonly believed highly dangerous to society; they 
have invaded Congress with their petitions; nay, it is 
even reported that they have been seen in public places, 
walking arm in arm with persons of African descent 
and complexion. And how are these men treated, in 
our age of toleration and free inquiry? How are they 
treated by those who are most fiercely liberal, in the 
condemnation of our ancestors, for persecuting the 
Quakers? The answer is found in the roar of mobs 
and the smoke of smouldering ruins — in presses vio- 
lently suppressed — in the murder of editors, and the 
acquittal of the murderers by perjured jurymen. How 
are they treated in those enlightened regions of the 
Union, where Puritanism, Blue laws, and New Eng- 
land intolerance, are renounced most fervently and de- 
voutly? Let one of these "pestilent fanatics" adven- 
ture on a mission to Mississippi or Virginia, and how 
much better does he fare than Humphrey Norton fared 
in Plymouth and New Haven ?^ The "little finger" 
of a Lynch committee, is "thicker than the loins" of 
a Puritan magistracy, against the fanatics that make 
war upon established opinions and cherished institu- 
tions. 

What then is the chief difference between that age 
^ Kingsley, 99. 



LEONARD BACON 197 

and the present, in respect to tolerance, in an extreme 
case like that of the Quakers? The difference is just 
this. Our ancestors made laws against the fanatics 
with whom they had to do, and boldly and manfully 
maintained those laws. The Quaker who suffered in 
New England, suffered the penalty of a known law, 
after a judicial conviction. In our day, on the other 
hand, laws to limit freedom of opinion and of discus- 
sion, are inconsistent with the enlightened and liberal 
maxims of government, that now so happily prevail ; 
and therefore what the law cannot do, in that it is weak, 
must be done by the mob, without law and against law, 
in that high court of equity, where rage, more fanati- 
cal than any other fanaticism, is at once accuser, wit- 
ness, judge, and executioner. 

Another topic in the indictment against the founders 
of New England, is the character and influence of their 
ministers. The true answer to this is to be found in 
the entire civil and ecclesiastical history of New Eng- 
land. The History of the United States, now in pro- 
gress, from the pen of one of the most accomplished 
scholars of New England, as by the beauty of its style, 
the philosophic reach of its views, and the epic unity 
into which the poetic mind of its author combines and 
blends its variegated materials, it makes its own way, 
where the humble but not less faithful chronicles of 
elder time have not been known, — will do much towards 
refuting the popular calumny. I hesitate not to say 
that no instance can be found in the history of man, 
in which the ministers of religion, as a body, have so 
completely and spontaneously denuded themselves of 
all power civil and ecclesiastical, as was done by the 
ministers of New England. They retained in their 
hands as ministers no power whatever but the power 
of their learning, their good sense, and their personal 



198 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

characters. If I had time to show you the full charac- 
ter of John Davenport, and the influence which he ex- 
erted in the colony of New Haven, I should have no 
need of any other argument. But as I cannot do this, 
you will allow me to give you from the records of New 
Haven, one scene of his history never yet published. 

At a town-meeting, — or as it was called in those 
days, a general court for the town, — on the 28th of Feb- 
ruary, 1659, a request was made by the farmers of what 
is now East Haven and North Haven, for certain 
grants of land and privileges in order to the establish- 
ment of villages, so that they maintaining public wor- 
ship and other town expenses by themselves, should not 
be taxed for such expenses in the town, and should 
have the power of taxing all the lands within their lim- 
its whether belonging to themselves or non-residents. 
The application was of course resisted on the ground 
that this setting off of new parishes would increase the 
town's taxes, and would diminish the ability of the peo- 
ple to support the ministry. It was obvious that the 
inhabitants of the town had an immediate pecuniary in- 
terest against the petition. The petitioners seem to 
have thought — reasonably enough — that by having 
such privileges and forming distinct parishes, each with 
a village at its center, they would not only be relieved 
from the very serious inconvenience of coming into 
town every Lord's day, and every training day or town 
meeting day; but would be able to give more value to 
their lands, and to get a more competent subsistence. 
The proposal seems to have been something like an 
effort on the part of a body of men of inferior condi- 
tion, to obtain such a change as would put them more 
completely on a level with the merchants and capitalists 
of the town. In other words, it was what would now 
be called a movement of the democracy. One of the 



LEONARD BACON 199 

farmers said, "it was well known that at the first they 
were many of them looked upon as mean men to live by 
their labor ; therefore they had at first small lots given 
them; but they finding by experience that they could 
not in that way maintain their families, they were put 
upon looking out." 

On this occasion, Mr. Davenport took the lead in the 
discussion. He addressed the meeting immediately 
after the proposal had been stated ; and in opposition to 
what most would regard as the town's pecuniary inter- 
est in the case, in opposition to the feeling, how shall the 
support of the ministry here be secured, and in opposi- 
tion to the natural reluctance with which towns as well 
as individuals give up any particle of power, he argued 
strenuously for the extension of these privileges to the 
farmers. His arguments are so characteristic not only 
of his piety, but of his good sense and of his political 
wisdom, that they are worth repeating at length, as we 
find them on the records. 

"The business they were exercised about being of 
great weight both for the honor of God and the good of 
posterity, he therefore desired that it might be weight- 
ily considered. 

"If we look to God, it is that his kingdom may come 
and be set up among us, and that his will may be done. 
Now if we provide not for the sanctification of the Sab- 
bath, the will of God will not be done. The law, he 
said, was expressed Levit. xxiii, 3, 'Six days shall work 
be done, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest, a 
holy convocation, ye shall do no work therein, it is the 
Sabbath of the Lord in all yoiir dwellings.' This law 
was not proper to the land of Canaan, but a brief repe- 
tition of the fourth commandment, which requires that 
we should sanctify the Sabbath as a day of holy rest. 
Now in this way of farms at such a distance, it cannot 



200 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

be kept as a holy convocation, and as a day of holy rest 
in all our dwellings. Therefore we shall live in the 
breach of the fourth commandment in this way. 

"Besides, there are other things to be attended (as 
they ought to be) in a well ordered commonwealth; 
particularly, to use all due means to prevent sin in 
others, which cannot be done in this way; for many 
great abominations may be committed, and bring the 
wrath of God on the plantation; like the secret fact of 
Achan, — for which, wrath came upon the whole con- 
gregation of Israel, because they used not what means 
they might to prevent it ; therefore could they not pros- 
per when they went against the men of Ai. Therefore, 
would we prosper, let us prevent sin what we can in the 
farms. If they were brought into a village form, there 
might be some officer to look to civil order. But that 
being not done, he saw not but that we are in continued 
danger of the wrath of God, because we do not what 
we may for the prevention of disorders that may fall 
out there. 

"And besides this, we are to look to the good of pos- 
terity. Now it is a sad object to consider, how they are 
deprived of the means for the education of their chil- 
dren. But if they were reduced to villages, they might 
then have one to teach their children. 

"Mr. Davenport farther said, Let there be no divi- 
sions or contentions among you. But let every one, 
with some self-denial, set himself to further the work so 
as may be for the good both of the town and the farms. 
He said he sought not the destruction of the town or 
farms. But in his judgment, he thought, if the town 
fall into a way of trade, then the villages might be help- 
ful to the town, and the town to the villages. And if 
the town did not consider of some way to further trade 
[that is, not only buying and selling, but the production 



LEONARD BACON 201 

of commodities to be bought and sold,] how they would 
subsist he saw not. He farther said, he did like it well 
that there had been some consultation about a mill," — 
which — "if God prosper it, may be a furtherance of 
trade. And if it please God to bless the iron work, that 
may be also a foundation for trade. Now put all these 
together ; — the town falling into a way of trade will be 
in a better state, and the villages accommodated; and 
the honor of God in the sanctification of the Sabbath 
and the upholding of civil order will be provided for. 

"Mr. Davenport farther said, that he looked upon it 
as a merciful hand of God that his wrath hath not broke 
out against us more than it hath, when sin hath not 
been prevented at the farms as it might have been. 
Let us now, said he, set our thoughts a-work how the 
kingdom of Christ may be settled among us, and that 
the will of God may be done in the sanctification of 
the Sabbath, by reducing the farms into villages. But 
herein we must go above sense and reason. Lay this 
foundation. Doth God require it? If he doth, then here 
we must exercise faith ; as the Jews, — how they should 
be supplied, being God had commanded that every 
seventh year their land should rest, — and for safety, 
when at the commandment of God all their males must 
thrice in a year appear before the Lord at Jerusalem. 
Yet we must make use of reason and understanding 
that it may be done in such a way as may be for the 
good both of the town and of the farms. And the Lord 
guide you in it." 

By this argument of Mr. Davenport's, the subject 
was introduced, and the discussion opened. All the 
veneration with which the people regarded their pas- 
tor did not prevent the free expression of objections. 
Among others, Sergeant Jeffries, while he professed 
himself "marvellous willing the villages should go on," 



202 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

thought it was "to be considered whether villages will 
not wrong the town much," and suggested, further- 
more, "that the ministry of tlie colony was much un- 
settled,^ which is a great discouragement to such a 
work." "To which Mr. Davenport answered, that 
Christ holds the stars in his right hand, and disposes of 
them as seems good to him. But this we must know, 
that if we obey not the voice of the prophets, God will 
take away the prophets. He further said, If we build 
God's house, God will build our house. He exhorted to 
consider whether it be our duty or not, and said that 
unless we look upon it as a duty, he would never advise 
to go about villages, nor any thing else of that nature." 
All this, I say, shows us the character of the first 
New England pastors, and the sort of influence which 
they exerted in the community. Davenport's great 
concern was, indeed, that Christ's kingdom might be 
set up, that God's will might be done, and that to this 
all the arrangements of the commonwealth might tend. 
Sin, which when not duly restrained, brings God's wrath 
upon communities as upon individuals, was that which 
of all things he most feared. But his views did not 
begin and end with these two points. To him the good 
of posterity as dependent on education, was the great- 
est of public interests. The thought that any of the 
people were deprived of means for the education of 
their children, affected him with sadness. His influ- 
ence made men feel that the surest way to prosper, was 
to be ever doing God's work, and to have all our inter- 
ests identified with the prosperity of the kingdom of 
God. Yet his piety was not inconsistent with the most 
sagacious policy. Even when he would have men "go 

^ This was in February, 1659. Mr. Priidden, in 1656. Mr. 
The Church in Milford was Higginson left Guilford in 
then vacant by the death of 1659. 



LEONARD BACON 203 

above sense and reason," and "exercise faith," he would 
nevertheless have them "make use of reason and un- 
derstanding" to ascertain and promote the public wel- 
fare. His comprehensive mind, which his piety en- 
larged instead of contracting, formed in itself the idea 
which New England now exhibits every where in the 
happy reality; manufacturing and commercial towns 
upon the bays and rivers; rural municipalities filling 
the country around; and town and country each free 
from subjection to the other, yet mutually dependent, 
ministering to each other's prosperity. 

To the stranger passing through New England, and 
becoming acquainted with the peculiarities of our social 
condition and of our civil polity, nothing is more strik- 
ing, or more admirable, than the continual succession 
of villages, each with its neat white spire, its school 
houses, its clusters of comfortable dwellings, its own 
municipal rights and regulations, and each vying with 
its neighbor villages in order, thrift, and beauty. In 
other parts of the country, where New England influ- 
ence not having predominated at the beginning, the 
forms of society are not molded after ours, you see a 
succession of broad farms, with many a pleasing indi- 
cation of prosperous industry; but the villages are 
only at the "county seat," or where the exigencies of 
business create them. New England is a land of vil- 
lages, not of manufacturing villages merely, or trading 
villages, but of villages formed for society, villages in 
each of which the meeting house is the acropolis. The 
reasons of this peculiarity appear from that argument 
of Mr. Davenport's which I have just recited. These 
villages were created — not as many have supposed, for 
defense alone, else why did not the same reason cause 
villages in Pennsylvania and Virginia — but first that 
the worship of God might be maintained, and his Sab- 



204 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

baths be duly honored ; secondly, that the people might 
have schools for all their children; thirdly, that they 
might maintain among themselves the most efficient 
civil order; and fourthly, that instead of living, each 
planter in solitary independence, they might live in mu- 
tual dependence and mutual helpfulness, and might 
thus develop more rapidly and effectually the natural 
resources of the country. 

It is always easy to detract from greatness and from 
goodness; for the greatest minds are not exempt from 
infirmity, and the purest and noblest bear some stain of 
human imperfection. Let others find fault with the 
founders of the New England colonies, because they 
were not more than human ; be it ours to honor them. 
We have no occasion to disparage the wisdom or the 
virtues of the lawgivers of other states and nations; 
nor need the admirers of Calvert or of Penn detract 
from the wisdom, the valor, or the devotion of the 
fathers of New England. Not to Winthrop and Cot- 
ton, nor to Eaton and Davenport, nor yet to Bradford 
and Brewster, belongs the glory of demonstrating with 
how little government society can be kept together, and 
men's lives and property be safe from violence. That 
glory belongs to Roger Williams; and to him belongs 
also the better glory of striking out and maintaining, 
with the enthusiasm though not without something of 
the extravagance of genius, the great conception of a 
perfect religious liberty. New England has learned to 
honor the name of Williams as one of the most illus- 
trious in her records; and his principle of unlimited 
religious freedom, is now incorporated into the being 
of all her commonwealths. To Penn belongs the glory 
of having first opened in this land a free and broad 
asylum for men of every faith and every lineage. To 
him due honor is conceded; and America, still receiv- 



LEONARD BACON 205 

ing into her "broad-armed ports," and enrolling among 
her own citizens, the thousands that come not only 
from the British Isles, but from the Alps, and from the 
Rhine, and from the bloody soil of Poland, — glories in 
his spreading renown. What then do we claim for the 
Pilgrims of Plymouth — what for the stern old Puritans 
of the Bay and of Connecticut — what for the founders 
of New Haven ? Nothing, but that you look with can- 
dor on what they have done for their posterity and for 
the world. Their labors, their principles, their institu- 
tions, have made New England, with its hard soil and 
its cold, long winters, "the glory of all lands." The 
thousand towns and villages, — the decent sanctuaries 
not for show but for use, crowning the hill-tops, or 
peering out from the valleys, — the means of education 
accessible to every family — the universal diffusion of 
knowledge — the order and thrift, the general activity 
and enterprise, the unparalleled equality in the distribu- 
tion of property, the general happiness, resulting from 
the diffusion of education and of pure religious doc- 
trine, — the safety in which more than half the popula- 
tion sleep nightly with unbolted doors, — the calm, holy 
Sabbaths, when mute nature in the general silence be- 
comes vocal with praise, when the whisper of the breeze 
seems more distinct, the distant water-fall louder and 
more musical, the carol of the morning birds, clearer 
and sweeter, — this is New England ; and where will 
you find the like, save where you find the operation of 
New England principles and New England influence? 
This is the work of our fathers and ancient lawgivers. 
They came hither, not with new theories of government 
from the laboratories of political alchymists, not to try 
wild experiments upon human nature, but only to found 
a new empire for God, for truth, for virtue, for free- 
dom guarded and bounded by justice. To have failed 



2o6 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

in such an attempt had been glorious. Their glory is 
that they succeeded. 

In founding their commonwealths, their highest aim 
was the glory of God in "the common welfare of all." 
Never before, save when God brought Israel out of 
Egypt, had any government been instituted with such 
an aim. They had no model before them, and no guid- 
ance save the principles of truth and righteousness em- 
bodied in the word of God, and the wisdom which he 
giveth liberally to them that ask him. They thought 
that their end, "the common welfare of all," was to be 
secured by founding pure and free Churches, by pro- 
viding the means of universal education, and by laws 
maintaining perfect justice, which is the only perfect 
liberty. "The common welfare of all," said Daven- 
port, is that "whereunto all men are bound principally 
to attend in laying the foundation of a commonwealth, 
lest posterity rue the first miscarriages when it will be 
too late to redress them. They that are skilled in archi- 
tecture observe, that the breaking or yielding of a stone 
in the groundwork of a building, but the breadth of the 
back of a knife, will make a cleft of more than half a 
foot in the fabric aloft. So important, saith mine au- 
thor, are fundamental errors. The Lord awaken us to 
look to it in time, and send us his light and truth to 
lead us into the safest ways in these beginnings." ^ 

Not in vain did that prayer go up to heaven. Light 
and truth were sent ; and posterity has had no occasion 
to rue the miscarriages of those who laid the "ground- 
work" of New England. On their foundations has 
arisen a holy structure. Prayers, toils, tears, sacrifices, 
and precious blood, have hallowed it. No unseemly 
fissures deforming "the fabric aloft," dishonor its 
founders. Convulsions that have rocked the world, 
^Discourse upon Civil Government, 14. 



LEONARD BACON 207 

have not moved it. When terror has seized the nations, 
and the faces of kings have turned pale at the footsteps 
of Almighty wrath, peace has been within its walls, and 
still the pure incense has been fragrant at its altar. 
Wise master-builders were they who laid the founda- 
tions. They built for eternity. 

As we trace our history from one period of distress 
and conflict to another, the thought is continually pre- 
senting itself. How great the expense at which our 
privileges have been obtained for us! We dwell in 
peace and perfect safety. The lines are fallen to us 
in pleasant places. Beauty, comfort, light, joy, are all 
around us. The poorest man among us, has within his 
reach, immunities and blessings without number, means 
of improvement and means of enjoyment, to which the 
far greater portion of mankind, even in the most fa- 
vored communities, have hitherto been strangers. And 
how little of this has been obtained by any effort or any 
sacrifice of ours. We have entered into other men's 
labors. We are enjoying the results of their agonies, 
and the answer to their prayers. They subdued the 
wilderness, and planted a land not sown ; that we might 
dwell in a land adorned with culture, and enriched with 
the products of industry and art. They traversed with 
weary steps the pathless woods, where the wild beast 
growled upon them from his lair ; that we might travel 
upon roads of iron, and borne by powers of which they 
never dreamed, might leave the winds behind us as we 
go. They encountered all that is terrible in savage 
war, and shed their blood in swamps and forests ; that 
we might live in this security. They, with anxiety that 
never rested, and with many a stroke of vigilant or 
daring policy, baffled the machinations of the enemies 
who sought to reduce them to a servile dependence on 
the crown; that we might enjoy this popular govern- 



2o8 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

meiit, these equal laws, this perfect liberty. They came 
to the world's end, away from schools and libraries, 
and all the fountains of light in the old world ; that 
we and our children might inhabit a land, glorious with 
the universal diffusion of knowledge. They were ex- 
iles for truth and purity, they like their Savior, were 
tempted in the wilderness; that the truth might make 
us free, and that the richest blessing of their covenant 
God might come on their posterity. All that there is 
in our lot for which to be grateful, we owe, under God, 
to those who here have labored, and prayed, and suf- 
fered for us. 

So it is every where. While every man is in one 
view the arbiter of his own destiny, the author of his 
own weal or woe; in another view, equally true and 
equally important, every man's lot is determined by 
others. Every where in this world, you see the prin- 
ciple of vicarious action and vicarious suffering. No 
being under the government of God, exists for himself 
alone; and in this world of conflict and of change, 
where evermore one generation passeth away and an- 
other generation cometh, the greatest toil of each suc- 
cessive age is to provide for its successors. Thus, by 
the very constitution and conditions of our existence 
here, does our Creator teach us to rise above the nar- 
row views and aims of selfishness, and to find our hap- 
piness in seeking the happiness of others. Such is 
God's plan, — such are the relations by which he con- 
nects us with the past and with the future, as well as 
with our fellow actors in the passing scene; and the 
mind which by the grace of the gospel has been re- 
newed to a participation "of the Divine nature," throws 
itself spontaneously into God's plan, and learns the 
meaning of that motto, "None of us liveth to himself, 
and none dieth to himself." Such a mind, created 



LEONARD BACON 209 

anew in Christ, and knowing him and the power of his 
resurrection, knows also the fellowship of his suffer- 
ings, being made conformable to his death. In this 
spirit an apostle exclaimed, "I rejoice in my sufferings 
for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflic- 
tions of Christ." 

Look about you now, and compute if you can, how 
much you are enjoying of the purchase of other men's 
toils, the results of their patience and steadfastness, and 
the answer to their prayers. The debt is infinite. All 
that you can do to discharge it, is to stand in your lot, 
for truth, for freedom, for virtue, and "for the good of 
posterity." 



ADDRESS 

ROBERT C. WINTHROP 
1839 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 
(1809- 1894.) 

The oration of 1839 was delivered at the Broadway Tabernacle, 
by Mr. Winthrop of Boston. The speaker was a New Eng- 
lander of the New Englanders, a descendant both of the Gov- 
ernor of his name in Massachusetts and of Governor Winthrop 
of Connecticut. Since 1834 Mr. Winthrop had been a member 
of the legislature of his state, and in this year had been elected 
to Congress. Later he was to serve as Speaker of the House, 
and, for a few months, as successor in the Senate to Mr. Web- 
ster. When invited to New York for this anniversary, however, 
he was only on the eve of his career as the able, conservative 
leader, but his gifts as an orator were known, and for occa- 
sional addresses he was in wide demand then as throughout the 
period of marked public life and the years of retirement that 
followed. 



ADDRESS 

TOWARDS the close of the year 1558, about 281 
years ago, a little more than nine times the period 
which has been commonly assigned as the term of a 
generation, and only four times the three score years 
and ten which have been Divinely allotted to the life 
of man, a Virgin Princess ascended the throne of Eng- 
land. Inheriting, together with the throne itself, a full 
measure of that haughty and overbearing spirit which 
characterized the Royal race from which she sprang, 
she could not brook the idea of any partition of her 
power, or any control over her person. She seemed re- 
solved that that race should end with her, and that the 
crown which it had so nobly won on Bosworth Field 
should seek a new channel of succession, rather than 
it should be deprived, in her person and through any 
accident of her sex, of one jot or tittle of that high 
prerogative, which it had now enjoyed for nearly a 
century. She seemed to prefer, not only to hold, her- 
self a barren sceptre — no heir of hers succeeding — 
but even to let that sceptre fall into the hands of the 
issue of a hated, persecuted, and finally murdered rival, 
rather than risk the certainty of wielding it herself, 
with that free and unembarrassed arm which befitted a 
daughter of the Tudors. 

Accordingly, no sooner had she grasped it, and seated 
herself securely upon the throne of her Fathers, than 
she declared to her suppliant Commons — who doubtless 

213 



214 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

presumed that they could approach a Queen of almost 
six-and-twenty, with no more agreeable petition, than 
that she would graciously condescend to select for her- 
self an help meet for her in the management of the 
mighty interests which had just been intrusted to her — 
that England was her husband ; that she had wedded it 
with the marriage ring upon her finger, placed there by 
herself with that design on the very morning of her cor- 
onation; that while a private person she had always 
declined a matrimonial engagement, regarding it even 
then as an incumbrance, but that much more did she 
persist in this opinion now that a great Kingdom had 
been committed to her charge; and that, for one, she 
wished no higher character or fairer remembrance of 
her should be transmitted to posterity, when she should 
pay the last debt to Nature, than to have this inscription 
engraved on her tombstone — "Here lies Elizabeth, who 
lived and died a Maiden Queen." 

In the purpose thus emphatically declared at her ac- 
cession, the Queen of whom I speak persevered to her 
decease. Scorning the proverbial privilege of her sex 
to change their minds at will upon such a subject, and 
resisting the importunities of a thousand suitors, she 
realized that vision of a Midsummer Night's Dream, 
which was so exquisitely unfolded to her by the immor- 
tal Dramatist of her day : 

"I saw 
Flying between the cold moon and the earth 
Cupid all-armed : a certain aim he took 
At a fair Vestal, throned by the West, 
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow 
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; — 
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon ; 
And the imperial votress passed on, 
In maiden meditation, fancy-free." 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 215 

But Elizabeth was not quite content to wait for a 
tombstone, on which to inscribe this purpose and its ful- 
fillment. Proclaimed, as it annually was, through the 
whole length and breadth of the Old World, from al- 
most every corner of which proposals of a character to 
shake and change it, were continually poured in upon 
her, — she resolved to engrave it once and forever upon 
the New World also, where as yet there was no civilized 
suitor to teaze her with his pretensions, whose very ex- 
istence had been discovered less than a century before 
by Christopher Columbus, and the Northern Continent 
of which had been brought within the reach of her own 
prerogative by the subsequent discovery of Sebastian 
Cabot. To that whole Continent she gave the name of 
Virginia; and at her death, after a reign of five-and- 
forty years, that whole Continent, through all its yet 
unmeasured latitudes and longitudes, from the confines 
of Labrador to the Mexican Gulf, was known by no 
other title, than that which thus marked it as the do- 
minion of a Maiden Queen. 

But it was that Queen's dominion only in name. 
Four times, indeed, she had essayed to people it and 
plant her banners there. But in vain. Sir Humphrey 
Gilbert, to whom the first patent for this purpose was 
granted, being compelled to return prematurely to Eng- 
land by the disasters he had experienced on the coast of 
Newfoundland, was lost in a storm on the homeward 
passage, and all that survived of his gallant enterprise, 
was that sublime exclamation, as he sat in the stern of 
his sinking bark — "It is as near to Heaven by sea as 
by land." — By the resolute and undaunted efforts of 
his illustrious brother-in-law, vSir Walter Raleigh, how- 
ever, three separate companies of Colonists were after- 
wards conducted to the more Southern parts of the Con- 
tinent, and each in succession commenced a settlement 



2I6NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

at Roanoke Bay. But two of them perished on the 
spot, without leaving behind them even so much as the 
means of ascertaining whether they had owed their de- 
struction to force or to famine ; — while the third, which, 
indeed, was the first in order, within a year from its 
departure, returned in disgust to its native land. And 
the whole result of Virginia Colonization and Virginia 
Commerce, upon which such unbounded hopes of glory 
and of gain had been hung by Raleigh and cherished 
by the Queen, had hitherto consisted in the introduction 
into England, by this last named band of emigrants 
returning home in despair, of a few hundreds of to- 
bacco, and in Queen Elizabeth herself becoming one 
of Raleigh's pupils in that most maidenly and most 
Queenly accomplishment — smoking a pipe. Not one 
subject did Elizabeth leave at her death in that wide 
spread Continent, which she had thus destined to the 
honor of perpetuating the memory of her haughty and 
ambitious virginity. 

Within a year or two past, a second Maiden Queen 
has ascended the throne which the first exchanged for 
a grave in 1603. And when she casts her eye back, as 
she can scarcely fail frequently to do, to the days of 
her illustrious prototype, and compares the sceptre 
which Elizabeth so boldly swayed for nearly half a 
century with that which trembles in her girlish hand, 
she may console herself with the reflection, that if the 
strength and potency of her own are greatly inferior, 
its reach and sweep are, practically at least, vastly more 
extended. She sees the immediate successor to Eliza- 
beth, uniting the crowns of England and Scotland, and 
preparing the way for that perfect consolidation of the 
two Countries which another Century was destined to 
complete. Ireland, too, she finds no longer held by the 
tenure of an almost annual conquest, but included in 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 217 

the bonds of the same great Union. While beyond the 
boundaries of the Imperial Homestead, she beholds her 
Power bestriding the World, like a Colossus, a foot on 
either Hemisphere — in one, military posts and colonial 
possessions hailing her accession and acknowledging 
her sway, which were without even a name or local hab- 
itation in the history of the World as Raleigh wrote it — 
and in the other, a Company of Adventurers which 
Elizabeth chartered a few years before her death, to try 
the experiment of a trade with the East Indies by the 
newly discovered passage round the Cape of Good 
Hope, converted from a petty Mercantile Corporation 
into a vast Military Empire, and holding in her name 
and expending in her service territorial dominions and 
revenues equal to those of the most powerful Indepen- 
dent Monarchies. 

But where is Virginia f Where is the "ancient do- 
minion" upon which her great Exemplar inscribed the 
substance of that "maiden meditation" which even now, 
mayhap, is mingled with the weightier cares of majesty 
in her own breast? Have all attempts to plant and 
colonize it proved still unsuccessful ? Is it still unre- 
claimed from original barbarism, — still only the abode 
of wolves and wild men? And why is it not found on 
the map of the British possessions — why not comprised 
in the catalogue of Her Majesty's Colonies? Two 
centuries and a third ago only, when Elizabeth quitted 
the throne, it was there, unsettled indeed and with not 
a civilized soul upon its soil, but opening its boundless 
territories to the adventure and enterprise of the British 
People, and destined to all human appearances to be 
one day counted among the brightest jewels in the 
crowns of the British Princes. Why is it not now seen 
sparkling in that which encircles her brow? 

If we might imagine the youthful Victoria, led along 



2I8NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

by the train of reflections which we have thus sug- 
gested, and snatching a moment from the anxious con- 
templation of Colonies which she is in immediate dan- 
ger of losing, to search after those which have been 
lost to her already, — if we might imagine her turning 
back the page of History to the period of the first Stu- 
art, to discover what became of the Virginia of Eliza- 
beth after her death, how it was finally planted, and how 
it passed from beneath the sceptre of her successes, — if 
we might be indulged in a far less natural imagination, 
and fancy ourselves admitted at this moment to the 
Royal presence, and, with something more even than 
the ordinary boldness of Yankee curiosity, peering over 
the Royal shoulder, as, impatient at the remembrance of 
losses sustained and still more so at the prospect of like 
losses impending, she hurries over the leaves on which 
the fortunes of that Virginia are recorded, and the for- 
tunes of all other Virginias foreshadowed, — what a 
scene should we find unfolding itself to her view ! 

She sees, at a glance, a permanent settlement ef- 
fected there, and James the First, more fortunate than 
his mother's murderer, inscribing a name not on a 
mere empty Territory only, but on an organized and 
inhabited Town. A page onward, she perceives a sec- 
ond and entirely separate settlement accomplished in a 
widely distant quarter of the Continent, and the cher- 
ished title of New England is now presented to her 
view. Around these two original footholds of civiliza- 
tion, she sees a hardy, enterprising and chivalrous peo- 
ple rapidly clustering, while other settlements are simul- 
taneously established along the territory which divides 
them. Thousands of miles of coast, with their parallel 
ranges of interior Country, are soon seen thickly 
studded over with populous and flourishing plantations. 
The population of them all, which had run up from o to 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 219 

300,000 by the close of the 17th Century, is found ad- 
vanced to more than two million by the close of the 
18th. And another page displays to her kindling gaze 
thirteen as noble Colonies as the Sun ever shone upon, 
with nearly three millions of inhabitants, all acknow- 
ledging their allegiance to the British Crown, all con- 
tributing their unmatched energies to the support and 
extension of the British Commerce, and all claiming, as 
their most valued birthright, the liberties and immuni- 
ties of the British Constitution. Ah ! did the volume 
but end there ! But she perceives, as she proceeds, that 
in a rash hour those liberties and immunities were de- 
nied them. Resistance, War, Independence, in letters 
of blood now start up bewilderingly to her sight. And 
where the Virginia of Elizabeth was, two centuries 
and a third ago, a waste and howling wilderness upon 
which civilized man was as yet unable to maintain him- 
self a moment — she next beholds an Independent and 
United Nation of sixteen millions of Freemen, with a 
Commerce second only to her own, and with a Coun- 
try, a Constitution, an entire condition of men and 
things, which from all previous experience in the 
growth of Nations, ought to have been the fruit of at 
least a thousand years, and would have been regarded 
as the thrifty produce of a Millennium well employed ! 

Gentlemen of the New England Society and Fellow 
Citizens of New York, of this wonderful rise and prog- 
ress of our Country, from the merely nominal and 
embryo existence which it had acquired at the dawn of 
the 1 7th Century, to the mature growth, the substantial 
prosperity, the independent greatness and National 
grandeur in which it is now beheld, we this day com- 
memorate a main, original spring. The 226. of Decem- 
ber, 1620, was not the mere birthday of a Town or a 



220 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

Colony. Had it depended for its distinction upon 
events like these, it would have long ago ceased to be 
memorable. The Town which it saw planted, is in- 
deed still in existence, standing on the very site which 
the Pilgrims selected, and containing within its limits 
an honest, industrious and virtuous people, not un- 
worthy of the precious scenes and hallowed associations 
to whose enjoyment they have succeeded. But possess- 
ing, as it did originally, no peculiar advantages either 
of soil, locality or climate, and outstripped, as it natu- 
rally has been, in wealth, size, population and impor- 
tance, by thousands of other Towns all over the Conti- 
nent, it would scarcely suffice to perpetuate beyond its 
own immediate precincts, the observance, or even the 
remembrance of a day, of whose doings it constituted 
the only monument; while the Colony of whose estab- 
lishment that day was also the commencement, has long 
since ceased to enjoy any separate political existence. 
As if to rescue its Founders from the undeserved for- 
tune of being only associated in the memory of pos- 
terity with the settlers of individual States, and to in- 
sure for them a name and a praise in all quarters of 
the Country, the Colony of New Plymouth never 
reached the dignity of Independent Sovereignty to 
which almost all its sister Colonies were destined, and 
is now known only as the fraction of a County of a 
Commonwealth which was founded by other hands. 

Yes, the event which occurred two hundred and nine- 
teen years ago yesterday, was of wider import than the 
confines of New Plymouth. The area of New Eng- 
land, greater than that of Old England, has yet proved 
far too contracted to comprehend all its influences. 
They have been coextensive with our country. They 
have pervaded our Continent. They have passed the 
Isthmus. They have climbed the farthest Andes. They 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 221 

have crossed the Ocean. The seeds of the Mayflower, 
wafted by the winds of Pleaven, or borne in the Eagle's 
beak, have been scattered far and wide over the Old 
World as well as over the New. The suns of France 
or Italy have not scorched them. The frosts of Russia 
have not nipped them. The fogs of Germany have not 
blighted them. They have sprung up in every latitude, 
and borne fruit, some twenty, some fifty, and some an 
hundred fold. And though so often struck down and 
crushed beneath the iron tread of arbitrary Power, they 
are still ineradicably imbedded in every soil, and their 
leaves are still destined to be for the healing of all 
Nations. Oh, could only some one of the pious Fa- 
thers whose wanderings were this day brought to an 
end, be permitted to enter once more upon these earthly 
scenes ; could he, like the pious Father of ancient Rome, 
guided by some guardian spirit and covered with a 
cloud, be conducted, I care not to what spot beneath the 
sky, how might he exclaim, as he gazed, not with tears 
of anguish, but of rapture, not on some empty picture 
of Pilgrim sorrows and Pilgrim struggles, but upon 
the living realities of Pilgrim influence and Pilgrim 
achievement — "Quis locus — Qu(T regio — what place, 
what region upon earth is there, which is not full of the 
products of our labors ! Where, where, has not some 
darkness been enlightened, some oppression alleviated, 
some yoke broken or chain loosened, some better views 
of God's worship or man's duty, of Divine Law or 
human rights, been imparted by our principles or in- 
spired by our example !" 

This Country, Fellow Citizens, has in no respect 
more entirely contravened all previous experience in 
human affairs, than in affording materials for the mi- 
nutest details in the history of its earliest ages. I 
should rather say, of its earliest days, for it has had no 



222 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ages, and days have done for it, what ages have been 
demanded for elsewhere. But, whatever the periods 
of its existence may be termed, they are all historical 
periods. Its whole birth, growth, being, are before us. 
We are not compelled to resort to cunningly devised 
fables to account either for its origin or advancement. 
We can trace back the current of its career to the very 
rock from which it first gushed. 

Yet how like a fable does it seem, how even "stran- 
ger than fiction," to speak of the event which we this 
day commemorate, as having exerted any material in- 
fluence on the destinies of our Country, much more as 
having in any degree affected the existing condition of 
the world ! This ever-memorable, ever-glorious land- 
ing of the Pilgrims, how, where, by what numbers, 
under what circumstances was it made? From what 
invincible Armada did the Fathers of New England 
disembark? With what array of disciplined armies did 
they line the shore? Warned by the fate which had so 
frequently befallen other Colonists on the same Coast, 
what batteries did they bring to defend them from the 
incursions of a merciless foe, what stores to preserve 
them from the invasions of a not more merciful famine? 

In the whole history of Colonization, ancient or mod- 
ern, no feebler Company, either in point of numbers, 
armament, or supplies, can be found, than that which 
landed, on the day we commemorate, on these Amer- 
ican shores. Forty-one men, — of whom two, at least, 
came over only in the capacity of servants to others, 
and who manifested their title to be counted among the 
Fathers of New England within a few weeks after their 
arrival, by fighting with sword and dagger the first 
Duel which stands recorded on the annals of the New 
World, for which they were adjudged to be tied to- 
gether neck and heels and so to lie for four and twenty 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 223 

hours without meat or drink — forty-one men, — of 
whom one more, at least, had been shuffled into the 
ship's company at London, nobody knew by whom, and 
who even more signally vindicated his claim no long 
time after, to be enumerated among this pious, Pilgrim 
Band, by committing the first murder and gracing the 
first gallows of which there is any memorial in our 
Colonial History — forty-one men, all told, — with about 
sixty women and children, one of whom had been born 
during the passage and another in the harbor before 
they landed, — in a single ship, of only one hundred and 
eighty tons burthen, whose upper works had proved so 
leaky, and whose middle beam had been so bowed and 
wracked by the cross winds and fierce storms which 
they encountered during the first half of the voyage, 
that but for "a great iron screw" which one of the pas- 
sengers had brought with him from Holland and by 
which they were enabled to raise the beam into its place 
again, they must have turned back in despair — con- 
ducted, after a four months' passage upon the Ocean, 
either by the ignorance or the treachery of their Pilot, 
to a Coast widely different from that which they had 
themselves selected, and entirely out of the jurisdiction 
of the Corporation from which they had obtained their 
Charter — and landing at last, — after a four weeks' 
search along the shore for a harbor in which they could 
land at all, — at one moment wearied out with wading 
above their knees in the icy surf, at another tired with 
travelling up and down the steep hills and valleys cov- 
ered with snow, at a third, dashed upon the breakers in 
a foundering shallop whose sails, masts, rudder, had 
been successively carried away in a squall, with the 
spray of the sea frozen on them until their clothes 
looked as if they were glazed and felt like coats of iron, 
and having in all their search seen little else but graves. 



224 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

and received no other welcome but a shout of savages 
and a shower of arrows — landing at last, with a scanty 
supply of provisions for immediate use, and with ten 
bushels of corn for planting in the ensuing spring, 
which they had dug out of the sand-hills where the 
Indians had hidden it, and without which they would 
have been in danger of perishing, but for which, it is 
carefully recorded, they gave the owners entire content 
about six months after — landing at last, in the depth of 
winter, with grievous colds and coughs and the seeds 
of those illnesses which quickly proved the death of 
many — upon a bleak and storm-beaten Rock, — a fit em- 
blem of most of the soil by which it was surrounded — 
this, this, is a plain, unvarnished story of that day's 
transaction, — this was the triumphal entry of the New 
England Fathers upon the theatre of their glory! — ■ 
What has saved it from being the theme of ridicule and 
contempt? What has rescued it from being handed 
down through all history, as a wretched effort to com- 
pass a mighty end by paltry and utterly inadequate 
means? What has screened it from being stigmatized 
forever as a Quixotic sally of wild and hare-brained 
enthusiasts ? 

Follow this feeble, devoted band, to the spot which 
they have at length selected for their habitation. See 
them felling a few trees, sawing and carrying the tim- 
ber, and building the first New England house, of about 
twenty feet square, to receive them and their goods — 
and see that house, the earliest product of their ex- 
hausted energies, within a fortnight after it was fin- 
ished, and on the very morning it was for the first time 
to have been the scene of their wilderness worship, 
burnt in an instant to the ground. 

They have chosen a Governor — one whom of all 
others they respect and love — but his care and pains 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 225 

were so great for the common good, as therewith it is 
thought he oppressed himself, and shortened his days, 
and one morning, early in the spring, he came out of 
the cornfields, where he had been toiling with the rest, 
sick, and died. They have elected another; but who 
is there now to be governed ? They have chosen a Cap- 
tain, too, and appointed Military Orders; but who is 
there now to be armed and marched to battle? At the 
end of three months a full half of the Company are 
dead — of one hundred persons scarce fifty remain, and 
of those, the living are scarce able to bury the dead, 
the well not sufficient to tend the sick. Were there no 
graves in England, that they have thus come out to die 
in the wilderness ? 

But, doubtless, the diminution of their numbers has, 
at least, saved them from all fear of famine. Their 
little cornfields have yielded a tolerable crop, and the 
autumn finds such as have survived, in comparative 
health and plenty. And now, the first arrival of a ship 
from England rejoices them not a little. Once more 
they are to hear from home, from those dear families 
and friends which they have left behind them, to receive 
tokens of their remembrance in supplies sent to their re- 
lief, perhaps to behold some of them face to face com- 
ing over to share in their lonely exile. Alas! one of 
the best friends to their enterprise has, indeed, come 
over, and brought five-and-thirty persons to live in their 
plantation — but the ship is so poorly furnished with 
provisions, that they are forced to spare her some of 
theirs to carry her back, while not her passengers only, 
but themselves too, are soon threatened with starvation. 
The whole Company are forthwith put upon half al- 
lowance; — but the famine, notwithstanding, begins to 
pinch. They look hard for a supply, but none arrives. 
They spy a boat at sea ; it is nearing the shore ; it comes 



226 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

to land; — it brings — a letter; — it brings more; — it 
brings seven passengers to join them; — more mouths to 
eat, but no food, no hope of any. — But they have 
begged, at last, of a fisherman at the Eastward, as much 
bread as amounts to a quarter of a pound per day till 
harvest, and with that they are sustained and satisfied. 

And now, the Narragansetts, many thousand strong, 
begin to breathe forth threatenings and slaughter 
against them, mocking at their weakness and challeng- 
ing them to the contest. And when they look for the 
arrival of more friends from England, to strengthen 
them in this hour of peril, they find a disorderly, unruly 
band of fifty or sixty worthless fellows coming amongst 
them to devour their substance, to waste and steal their 
corn, and by their thefts and outrages upon the natives, 
also, to excite them to fresh and fiercer hostilities. 

Turn to the fate of their first mercantile adventure. 
The ship which arrived in their harbor next after the 
Mayflower had departed, and which, as we have seen, 
involved them in the dangers and distresses of a fam- 
ine, has been laden with the proceeds of their traffic 
with the Indians, and with the fruits of their own per- 
sonal toil. The little cargo consists of two hogsheads 
of beaver and other skins, and good clapboards as full 
as she can hold — the freight estimated in all at near 
five hundred pounds. — What emotions of pride, what 
expectations of profit, went forth with that little outfit ! 
And how were they doomed to be dashed and disap- 
pointed ! Just as the ship was approaching the English 
coast, she was seized by a French freebooter, and robbed 
of all she had worth taking ! 

View them in a happier hour, in a scene of pros- 
perity and success. They have a gallant warrior in 
their company, whose name, albeit it was the name of 
a little man, (for Miles Standish was hardly more than 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 227 

five feet high,) has become the very synonyme of a 
great Captain. An alarm has been given of a con- 
spiracy among the natives, and he has been empowered 
to enhst as many men as he thinks sufficient to make his 
party good against all the Indians in the Massachusetts 
Bay. — He has done so, has put an end to the conspiracy, 
and comes home laden with the spoils of an achievement 
which has been styled by his biographer his "most capi- 
tal exploit." — How long a list of killed and wounded, 
think you, is reported as the credentials of his bloody 
prowess, and how many men does he bring with him 
to share in the honors of the triumph ? The whole num- 
ber of Indians slain in this expedition was six, and 
though the Pilgrim hero brought back with him in 
safety every man that he carried out, the returning host 
numbered but eight beside their leader. He did not 
take more with him, we are told, in order to prevent 
that jealousy of military power, which, it seems, had 
already found its way to a soil it has never since left. 
But his proceedings, notwithstanding, by no means es- 
caped censure. When the pious Robinson heard of this 
transaction in Holland, he wrote to the Pilgrims "to 
consider the disposition of their Captain, who was of a 
warm temper," adding, however, this beautiful senti- 
ment in relation to the wretched race to which the vic- 
tims of the expedition belonged — "it would have been 
happy, if they had converted some, before they had 
killed any." 

Inconceivable Fortune ! Unimaginable Destiny ! In- 
scrutable Providence ! Are these the details of an event 
from which such all-important, all-pervading influences 
were to flow? Were these the means, and these the 
men, through which not New Plymouth only was to be 
planted, not New England only to be founded, not our 
whole Country only to be formed and moulded, but the 



228 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

whole Hemisphere to be shaped and the whole world 
shaken? Yes, Fellow Citizens, this was the event, 
these were the means, and these the men, by which these 
mighty impulses and momentous effects actually have 
been produced. And inadequate, unadapted, impotent, 
to such ends, as to outward appearances they may seem, 
there was a Power in them and a Power over them 
amply sufficient for their accomplishment, and the only 
powers that were thus sufficient. — The direct and im- 
mediate influence of the passengers in the Mayflower, 
either upon the destinies of our own land or of others, 
may, indeed, have been less conspicuous than that of 
some of the New England Colonists who followed 
them. But it was the bright and shining wake they left 
upon the waves, it was the clear and brilliant beacon 
they lighted upon the shores, that caused them to have 
any followers. They were the pioneers in that peculiar 
path of emigration which alone conducted to these 
great results. They, as was written to them by their 
brethren in the very outset of their enterprise, were the 
instruments to break the ice for others, and theirs shall 
be the honor unto the world's end ! 

When the Pilgrim Fathers landed upon Plymouth 
Rock, one hundred and twenty-eight years had elapsed 
since the discovery of the New World by Columbus. — 
During this long period, the Southern Continent of 
America had been the main scene of European adven- 
ture and enterprise. And richly had it repaid the exer- 
tions which had been made to subdue and settle it. 
The Empires of Montezuma and the Incas had surren- 
dered themselves at the first summons before the chival- 
rous energies of Cortes and Pizarro, and Brazil had 
mingled her diamonds with the gold and silver of 
Mexico and Peru, to deck the triumphs and crown the 
rapacity of the Spaniard and the Portuguese. 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 229 

But the Northern Continent had been by no means 
neglected in the adventures of the day. Nor had those 
adventures been confined to the subjects of Portugal and 
Spain. The Monarchs of those two kingdoms, indeed, 
emboldened by their success at the South, had put forth 
pretensions to the sole jurisdiction of the whole New 
Hemisphere. But Francis the First had well replied, 
that he should be glad to see the clause in Adam's IV ill, 
which made the Northern Continent their exclusive in- 
heritance, and France, under his lead, had set about 
securing for herself a share of the spoils. It was under 
French patronage that John Verazzano was sailing in 
1524, when the harbor of New York especially attracted 
his notice for its great convenience and pleasantness. 

But England, also, — with better right than either of 
the others, claiming, as she could, under the Cabots — 
had not been inattentive to the opportunity of enlarging 
her dominions, and I have already alluded to sundry 
unsuccessful attempts which were made by the English 
to effect this object, during the reign and under the 
patronage of Queen Elizabeth. 

Within a few months previous to the close of her 
reign and without her patronage, Bartholomew Gos- 
nold added another to the list of these unavailing ef- 
forts — having only achieved for himself the distinction 
of being the first Englishman that ever trod what was 
afterwards known as the New England shore, and of 
having given to the point of that shore upon which he 
first set foot, the homely, but now endeared and honored 
title of Cape Cod. 

Only a few years after the death of the Queen, how- 
ever, these efforts were renewed with fresh zeal. As 
early as 1606, King James divided the Virginia of 
Elizabeth into two parts, and assigned the colonization 
of them to two separate companies, by one of which, 
and especially by its President, the Lord Chief Justice 



230 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

Popham, an attempt was immediately made to settle 
the New England coast. A colony, indeed, was actu- 
ally planted under his patronage, and under the per- 
sonal lead of his brother, at Sagadahoc, near the mouth 
of the Kennebec River, in 1607. But it remained there 
only a single year, and was broken up under such dis- 
heartening circumstances, — the Colonists on their re- 
turn branding the Country "as over-cold and not hab- 
itable by our Nation," — that the Adventurers gave up 
their designs. 

Five or six years later, notwithstanding, in 16 14, the 
famous Captain John Smith, who had already, under 
the auspices of the other of the two Companies, estab- 
lished what afterwards proved to be, rather than really 
then was, a permanent settlement in Southern Virginia, 
having founded Jamestown in 1607, was induced to 
visit and survey this NortJiern Virginia also, as it was 
then called. And after his return home. Captain Smith 
prepared and published a detailed account of the Coun- 
try with a map, calling it for the first time, and as if to 
secure for it all the favor which the associations of a 
noble name could bestow, N'ezu England, and giving a 
most glowing description of the riches both of soil and 
sea, of forests and fisheries, which awaited the enjoy- 
ment of the settler. — "For I am not so simple," said 
he, (fortunate, fortunate for the foundation of the 
Country he was describing, such simplicity was at 
length discovered!) "for I am not so simple as to think 
that ever any other motive than wealth, will ever erect 
there a common weal, or draw company from their ease 
and humors at home to stay in New England." 

During the following year this gallant and chival- 
rous seaman and soldier evinced the sincerity of the 
opinion which he had thus publicly expressed, as to the 
inviting character of the spot, by attempting a settle- 



•■"--- 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 231 

ment there himself, and made two successive voyages 
for that purpose. But both of them were continued 
scenes of disappointments and disaster, and he, too, for 
whose Hon-hearted heroism nothing had ever seemed 
too difficult, was compelled to acknowledge himself 
overmatched, and abandon the undertaking. 

And where now were the hopes of planting New 
England? The friends to the enterprise were at their 
wit's end. All that the patronage of princes, all that 
the combined energies of rich and powerful Corpora- 
tions, all that the individual efforts of the boldest and 
most experienced private Adventurers, stimulated by 
the most glowing imaginations of the gains which 
awaited their grasp, could do, had been done, and done 
in vain. Means and motives of this sort, had effected 
nothing, indeed, on the whole North American Conti- 
nent, after more than half a century of uninterrupted 
operation, but a little settlement at one extremity by 
the Spanish, (St. Augustine in 1565,) a couple of 
smaller settlements at the other extremity by the 
French, (Port Roy^l, in 1605 and Quebec, in 1609,) 
and smaller and more precarious than either, the James- 
town settlement about midway between the two — this 
last being the only shadow — and but a shadow it was — 
of English Colonization on the whole Continent. 

But the Atlantic Coast of North America, and espe- 
cially that part of it which was to be known as New 
England, was destined to date its ultimate occupation 
to something higher and nobler than the chivalry of 
Adventurers, the greediness of Corporations or the 
ambition of Kings. The lust of new dominion, the 
thirst for treasure, the quest for spoil, had found an 
ample field, reaped an overflowing harvest, and rioted 
in an almost fatal surfeit on the Southern Continent. 
It might almost seem, in view of the lofty destinies 



232 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

which were in store for the Northern, in contemplation 
of the momentous influences it was to exert upon the 
welfare of mankind and the progress of the world, as if 
Providence had heaped those treasures and clustered 
those jewels upon the soil of Peru and Mexico, to 
divert the interest, absorb the passions, cloy the appetite 
and glut the rapacity which were naturally aroused by 
the discovery of a New World. W^e might almost im- 
agine the guardian Spirit of the Pilgrims commis- 
sioned to cast down this golden fruit and strew this 
Hesperian harvest along the pathway of the newly 
awakened enterprise, to secure the more certainly for 
the subjects of its appointed care, the possession of their 
promised land — their dowerless, but chosen Atalanta. 

But I am anticipating an idea which must not be thus 
summarily dismissed, and to which I may presently 
find an opportunity to do better justice. Meantime, 
however, let me remark, that we are not left altogether 
to supernatural agency for at least the secondary im- 
pulse under which New England was colonized. Nor 
were the earthly princes and potentates of whom I have 
already spoken, — Elizabeth, her Minister of Justice, 
and her successor in the throne, — though so signally 
frustrated in all their direct endeavors to that end, with- 
out a most powerful, though wholly indirect and invol- 
untary, influence, upon its final accompli shm.ent. 

The daughter of Ann Bullen could not fail to cher- 
ish a most hearty and implacable hatred towards that 
Church, in defiance of whose thunders she was conceived 
and cradled, and in the eye and open declaration of 
which she was a bastard, a heretic, an outlaw and an 
usurper. So far, at any rate, Elizabeth was a friend to 
the Reformation. But she had almost as little notion 
as her Father, of any reformation which reached be- 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 233 

yond releasing her dominions from the authority of the 
Pope, and establishing herself at the head of the 
Church. And, accordingly, the very first year of her 
reign was marked by the enactment of Laws, exacting, 
under the severest penalties, conformity to the doctrines 
and discipline of the English Church — a policy which 
she never relinquished. 

For a violation of these Laws and others of subse- 
quent enactment but of similar import, a large number 
of persons in her kingdom, whose minds had been too 
thoroughly inspired with disgust for the masks and 
mummeries of Catholic worship, to be content with a 
bare renunciation of the temporal or spiritual authority 
of the Pope, were arrested, imprisoned, and treated 
with all manner of persecution. At least six of them 
were capitally executed, and two of these, as it hap- 
pened, were condemned to death by that very Lord 
Chief Justice, whom we have seen a few years after- 
wards, at the head of the Plymouth Company, en- 
gaged in so earnest but unavailing an effort to colonize 
the New England coast. Little did he know that his 
part in that work had been already performed. 

In an imaginary "Dialogue between some Young 
Men born in New England and sundry Ancient Men 
that came out of Llolland and Old England," written 
in 1648 by Governor Bradford — a name which before 
all others should be this day remembered with venera- 
tion — the Young Men are represented as asking of the 
Old Men, how many Separatists had been executed. 
"We know certainly of six," replied the ancient men, 
"that were publicly executed, besides such as died in 
prisons. . . . Two of them were condemned by 
cruel Judge Popham, whose countenance and carriage 
was very rough and severe towards them, with many 



234 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

sharp menaces. But God gave them courage to bear 
it, and to make this answer : — 

"My Lord, your face we fear not, 
And for your threats we care not. 
And to come to your read service we dare not." 

Nor did King James depart from the footsteps of his 
predecessor in the rehgious poHcy of his administration. 
Though from his Scotch education and connections, 
and from the opinions which he had openly avowed 
before coming to the EngHsh throne, he had seemed 
pledged to a career of liberality and toleration, yet no 
sooner was he fairly seated on that throne than he, too, 
set about vindicating his claim to his new title of "De- 
fender of the Faith," and enforcing conformity to the 
rites and ceremonies of the English Church. And he 
cut short a conference at Hampton Court, between him- 
self and the Puritan leaders, got up at his own instiga- 
tion in the vainglorious idea that he could vanquish 
these heretics in an argument, with this summary and 
most significant declaration — 'Tf this be all they have 
to say, I will make them conform, or I zmll harry them 
out of tJie land." 

The idea of banishment was full of bitterness to those 
to whom it was thus sternly held up. They loved their 
native land with an affection which no rigor of re- 
straint, no cruelty of persecution, could quench. Death 
itself, to some of them at least, seemed to have fewer 
fears than exile. "We crave," was the touching lan- 
guage of a Petition of sixty Separatists in 1592, who 
had been committed unbailable to close prison in Lon- 
don, where they were allowed neither meat nor drink, 
nor lodging, and where no one was suffered to have ac- 
cess to them, so as no felons or traitors or murderers 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 235 

were thus dealt with, — "We crave for all of us but the 
liberty either to die openly or to live openly in the land 
of our nativity. If we deserve death, it beseemeth the 
majesty of justice not to see us closely murdered, yea, 
starved to death with hunger and cold, and stifled in 
loathsome dungeons. If we be guiltless, we crave but 
the benefit of our innocence, that we may have peace 
to serve our God and our Prince in the place of the 
sepulchres of our Fathers." 

But there were those among them, notwithstanding, 
to whom menaces, whether of banishment or of the 
block, even uttered thus angrily by one, who, as he 
once well said of himself, "while he held the appoint- 
ment of Judges and Bishops in his hand, could make 
what Law, and what Gospel he chose," were alike pow- 
erless, to prevail on them to conform to modes and 
creeds which they did not of themselves approve. They 
heard a voice higher and mightier than James's, calling 
to them in the accents of their own consciences, and 
saying, in the express language of a volume, which it 
had been the most precious result of all the discov- 
eries, inventions and improvements of that age of won- 
ders, to unlock to them — "Be ye not conformed — but 
be ye transformed" — and that voice, summon it to 
exile, or summon it to the grave, they were resolved to 
obey. 

Foiled, therefore, utterly in the first of his alterna- 
tives, the king resorted to the last. It was more within 
the compass of his power, and he did harry them out 
of the land. Within three years after the utterance of 
this threat, (viz. in 1607,) it is recorded by the Chro- 
nologist, that Messrs. Clifton's and Robinson's church 
in the North of England, being extremely harassed, 
some cast into prison, some beset in their houses, some 
forced to leave their farms and families, begin to fly 



236 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

over to Holland for purity of worship and liberty of 
conscience. 

Religions, true and false, have had their Hegiras, and 
Institutions and Empires have owed their origin to the 
flight of a child, a man, or a multitude. Moses fled 
from the face of Pharaoh, — but he returned to over- 
whelm him with the judgments of Jehovah, and to 
build up Israel into a mighty People. Mahomet with 
his followers fled from the Magistrates of Mecca, — but 
he came back, with the sword in one hand and the 
Koran in the other, and the Empire of the Saracens 
was soon second to none on the globe. "The Young 
Child and his Mother" fled from the fury of Herod, — 
but they returned, and the banner of the Cross was still 
destined to go forth conquering and to conquer. The 
Pilgrim Fathers, also, fled from the oppression of this 
arbitrary tyrant, and, although their return was to a 
widely distant portion of his dominions, yet return they 
did, and the Freedom and Independence of a great 
Republic, delivered from the yoke of that tyrant's 
successors, date back their origin this day, to the prin- 
ciples for which they were proscribed, and to the insti- 
tutions which they planted ! 

But let us follow them in their eventful flight. They 
first settle at Amsterdam, where they remain for about 
a year, and are soon joined by the rest of their brethren. 
But finding that some contentions had arisen in a 
Church which was there before them, and fearing that 
they might themselves become embroiled in them, 
though they knew it would be very much "to the preju- 
dice of their outward interest" to remove, yet "valuing 
peace and spiritual comfort above all other riches" 
they depart to Leyden, and there live "in great love and 
harmony both among themselves and their neighbor 
citizens for above eleven years." 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 237 

But, although during all this time they had been 
courteously entertained and lovingly respected by the 
people, and had quietly and sweetly enjoyed their 
Church liberties under the States, yet finding that, 
owing to the difference of their language, they could 
exert but little influence over the Dutch, and had not 
yet succeeded in bringing them to reform the neglect of 
observation of the Lord's day as a Sabbath, or any 
other thing amiss among them, — that, owing, also, to 
the licentiousness of youth in that Country and the 
manifold temptations of the place, their children were 
drawn away by evil examples into extravagant and 
dangerous courses, they now begin to fear that Holland 
would be no place for their church and their posterity 
to continue in comfortably, and on those accounts to 
think of a remove to America. And having hesitated a 
while between Guiana and Virginia as a place of resort, 
and having at last resolved on the latter, they send their 
agents to treat with the Virginia Company for a right 
within their chartered limits, and to see if the King 
would give them liberty of conscience there. The Com- 
pany they found ready enough to grant them a patent 
with ample privileges, but liberty of conscience under 
the broad seal King James could never be brought to 
bestow, and the most that could be extorted from him 
by the most persevering importunity was a promise, 
that he would connive at them, and not molest them, 
provided they should carry themselves peaceably. 

Notwithstanding this discouragement, however, they 
resolved to venture. And after another year of weary 
negotiation with the merchants who were to provide 
them with a passage, the day for their departure ar- 
rives. — It had been agreed that a part of the church 
should go before their brethren to America to prepare 
for the rest, and as the major part was to stay behind. 



238 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

it was also determined that their pastor, the beloved 
Robinson, should stay with them. Not only were the 
Pilgrims thus about to leave "that goodly and pleasant 
City which had been their resting place above eleven 
years," but to leave behind them also the greatest part 
of those with whom they had been so long and lov- 
ingly associated in a strange land, and this — to encoun- 
ter all the real and all the imaginary terrors which be- 
longed to that infancy of ocean navigation, to cross a 
sea of three thousand miles in breadth, and to reach at 
last a shore which had hitherto repelled the approaches 
of every civilized settler ! Who can describe the agonies 
of such a scene ? Their Memorialist has done it in lan- 
guage as satisfactory as any language can be, but the 
description still seems cold and feeble. 

"And now the time being come when they were to 
depart," says he, "they were accompanied with most 
of their brethren out of the City unto a Town called 
Delft Haven, where the ship lay ready to receive them. 
. . . One night was spent with little sleep with 
the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian 
discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian 
love. The next day, the wind being fair, they went on 
board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful 
was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear 
what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst 
them, what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy 
speeches pierced each other's hearts, that sundry of the 
Dutch strangers, that stood on the Key as spectators, 
could not refrain from tears. But the tide (which 
stays for no man) calling them away that were thus 
loth to depart, their reverend pastor falling down on 
his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks 
commended them with most fervent prayers unto the 
Lord and his blessing; — and then with mutual em- 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 239 

braces and many tears they took their leave of one an- 
other, which proved to be the last leave to many of 
them." 

Such was the embarkation of the New England Fa- 
thers ! — Such the commencement of that Pilgrim Voy- 
age, whose progress during a period of five months I 
have already described, and whose termination we this 
day commemorate ! Under these auspices and by these 
instruments was at last completed an undertaking which 
had so long baffled the efforts of Statesmen and Heroes, 
of Corporations and of Kings ! Said I not rightly that 
the Pilgrims had a power within them, and a Power 
over them, which was not only amply adequate to its 
accomplishment, but the only powers that were thus 
adequate? And who requires to be reminded what 
those powers were? 

I fear not to be charged with New England bigotry 
or Puritan fanaticism in alluding to the Power which 
was over the Pilgrims in their humble but heroic en- 
terprise. If Washington, in reviewing the events of 
our Revolutionary history, could say to the American 
Armies as he quitted their command, that "the singular 
interpositions of Providence in our feeble condition were 
such as could scarcely escape the attention of the most 
unobserving," and again to the American Congress, on 
first assuming the administration of the Union, that 
"every step by which the People of the United States 
had advanced to the character of an Independent Na- 
tion seemed to have been distinguished by some token 
of Providential agency," how much less can any one 
be in danger of subjecting himself to the imputation of 
indulging in a wild conceit or yielding to a weak super- 
stition, by acknowledging, by asserting, a Divine inter- 
vention in the history of New England Colonization. 
It were easy, it is true, to convey the same sentiment in 



240 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

more fashionable phraseology — to disguise an allusion 
to a Wonder-working Providence under the name of an 
extraordinary Fortune or cloak the idea of a Divine ap- 
pointment under the title of a lucky accident. But I 
should feel that I dishonored the memory of our New 
England sires, and deserved the rebuke of their assem- 
bled sons, were I, on an occasion like the present, to 
resort to such miserable paltering. 

No — I see something more than mere fortunate acci- 
dents or extraordinary coincidences in the whole discov- 
ery and colonization of our Country — in the age at 
which these events took place, in the People by whom 
they were effected, and more especially in the circum- 
stances by which they were attended, and may my 
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if ever I am 
ashamed to say so! 

When I reflect that this entire Hemisphere of ours 
remained so long in a condition of primeval barbarism 
— that the very existence of its vast Continents was so 
long concealed from the knowledge of civilized man — 
that these colossal mountains so long lifted their sum- 
mits to the sky and cast their shadows across the earth 
— that these gigantic rivers so long poured their 
mighty, matchless waters to the sea — that these mag- 
nificent forests so long waved their unrivalled foliage to 
the winds, and these luxuriant fields and prairies so 
long spread out their virgin sods before the sun — with- 
out a single intelligent human being to enjoy, to ad- 
mire, or even to behold them — when I reflect to what 
heights of civilization, ambition and power so many of 
the Nations of the Old World were successively ad- 
vanced, reaching a perfection in some branches of art 
and of science which has destined their very ruins to be 
the wonder, the delight, the study and the models of 
mankind for ever, and pushing their Commerce and 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 241 

their Conquests over sea and shore with an energy so 
seemingly indomitable and illimitable, and yet that 
these seas and these shores, reserved for other Argo- 
nauts than those of Greece and other Eagles than those 
of Rome, were protected alike from the reach of their 
arts and their arms, from their rage for glory and their 
lust for spoils — when I reflect that all the varieties of 
roaming tribes which, up to the period of the events of 
which I speak, had found their way nobody knows 
when or from whence, to this Northern Continent at 
least, were so mysteriously endowed with a nature, not 
merely to make no progress in improvement and settle- 
ment of themselves, but even to resist and defy every 
influence which could be brought to bear upon them 
by others, except such as tended to their own extirpa- 
tion and overthrow — how they shrank at the approach 
of the civilized settler, melting away as they retired, 
and marking the trail of their retreat, I had almost said, 
by the scent of their own graves — or, if some stragglers 
of a race less barbarous, at some uncertain epoch, were 
brought unknowingly upon our shores, that, instead of 
stamping the Rock upon which they landed with the 
unequivocal foot-prints of the Fathers of a mighty Na- 
tion, they only scratched upon its surface a few illegible 
characters, to puzzle the future antiquary to decide 
whether they were of Scandinavian or of Carthaginian, 
of Runic or of Punic origin, and to prove only this 
distinctly — that their authors were not destined to be 
the settlers, or even the discoverers, in any true sense of 
that term, of the Country upon which they had thus 
prematurely stumbled — when I reflect upon the mo- 
mentous changes in the institutions of society and in 
the instruments of human power, which were crowded 
within the period which was ultimately signalized by 
this discovery and this settlement — the press, by its 



242 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

magic enginery, breaking down every barrier and an- 
nihilating every monopoly in the paths of knowledge, 
and proclaiming all men equal in the arts of peace — 
gunpowder, by its tremendous properties, undermining 
the moated castles and rending asunder the plaited mail 
of the lordly Chieftains, and making all men equal on 
the field of battle — the Bible, rescued from its unknown 
tongues, its unauthorized interpretations and its un- 
worthy perversions, opened at length in its original sim- 
plicity and purity to the world, and proving that all 
men were born equal in the eye of God — when I see 
learning reviving from its lethargy of centuries, reli- 
gion reasserting its native majesty, and liberty — liberty 
itself — thus armed and thus attended, starting up anew 
to its long suspended career, and exclaiming, as it were, 
in the confidence of its new instruments and its new 
auxiliaries — "Give me now a place to stand upon — a 
place free from the interference of established power, a 
place free from the embarrassment of ancient abuses, 
a place free from the paralyzing influence of a jealous 
and overbearing prerogative — give me but a place to 
stand upon and I zvill move the world" — I cannot con- 
sider it, I cannot call it, a mere fortunate coincidence, 
that then, at that very instant, the veil of waters was 
lifted up, that place revealed, and the world moved ! 

When I reflect, too, on the Nation under whose reluc- 
tant auspices this revelation was finally vouchsafed to 
the longing vision of the intrepid Admiral — how deeply 
it was already plunged in the grossest superstitions and 
sensualities, how darkly it was already shadowed by the 
impending horrors of its Dread Tribunal, and how soon 
it was to lose the transient lustre which might be re- 
flected upon it from the virtues of an Isabella, or the 
genius of a Charles V., and to sink into a long and ray- 
less night of ignorance and oppression — when I look 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 243 

back upon its sister kingdom of the Peninsula, also, 
which shared with it in reaping the teeming first fruits 
of the new found world, and find them matching each 
other not more nearly in the boldness of their maritime 
enterprise, than in the sternness of their religious big- 
otry and in the degradation of their approaching doom 
— and when I remember how both of these kingdoms, 
from any Colonies of whose planting there could have 
been so poor a hope of any early or permanent advance- 
ment to the cause of human freedom, were attracted 
and absorbed by the mineral and vegetable treasures of 
the tropical islands and territories and by the gorgeous 
empires which spirits of congenial grossness and sensu- 
ality had already established there — while this precise 
portion of America, these noble harbors, these glorious 
hills, these exhaustless valleys and matchless lakes, pre- 
senting a combination of climate and of soil, of land 
course and water course, marked and quoted as it were, 
by Nature herself, for the abode of a great, united and 
prosperous Republic — the rock-bound region of New 
England not excepted from the category, which, though 
it can boast of nothing nearer akin to gold or diamonds 
than the sparkling mica of its granite or the glittering 
crystals of its ice, was yet framed to produce a wealth 
richer than gold, and whose price is above rubies — the 
intelligent and virtuous industry of a free people — when 
I remember, I say, how this exact portion of the New 
World was held back for more than a century after its 
discovery, and reserved for the occupation and settle- 
ment of the only Nation under the sun able to furnish 
the founders of such a Republic and the progenitors of 
such a People — the very Nation in which the reforms 
and inventions of the day had wrought incomparably 
the most important results, and human improvement 
and human liberty made incalculably the largest ad- 



244 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

vance — I cannot regard it, I cannot speak of it, as a 
mere lucky accident, that this Atlantic seaboard was 
settled by colonies of the Anglo-Saxon race ! 

And when, lastly, I reflect on the circumstances under 
which this settlement was in the end effected, on that 
part of the coast, more especially, which exerted a para- 
mount influence on the early destinies of the Continent, 
and gave the first unequivocal assurance that virtue and 
industry and freedom were here to find a refuge and 
here to found themselves an empire — when I behold a 
feeble company of exiles, quitting the strange land to 
which persecution had forced them to flee, entering with 
so many sighs and sobs and partings and prayers on a 
voyage so full of perils at the best, but rendered a hun- 
dred fold more perilous by the unusual severities of 
the season and the absolute unseaworthiness of their 
ship, arriving in the depth of winter on a coast to which 
even their pilot was a perfect stranger, and where "they 
had no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain 
them, no houses, much less towns, to repair unto for 
succor," but where, — instead of friends, shelter or re- 
freshment, — famine, exposure, the wolf, the savage, 
disease and death seemed waiting for them — and yet 
accomplishing an end which Royalty and patronage, 
the love of dominion and of gold, individual adventure 
and corporate enterprise had so long essayed in vain, 
and founding a Colony which was to defy alike the 
machinations and the menaces of Tyranny, in all pe- 
riods of its history — it needs not, it needs not, that I 
should find the coral pathway of the sea laid bare, and 
its waves a wall upon the right hand and the left, and 
the crazed chariot wheels of the oppressor floating in 
fragments upon its closing floods, to feel, to realize, that 
higher than human was the Power which presided over 
the Exodus of the Pilsfrim Fathers ! 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 245 

Was it not something more than the ignorance or 
the self-will of an earthly and visible Pilot, which, in- 
stead of conducting them to the spot which they had 
deliberately selected — the very spot on which we are 
now assembled — the banks of your own beautiful Hud- 
son, of which they had heard so much during their so- 
journ in Holland, but which were then swarming with 
a host of horrible savages — guided them to a coast, 
which though bleaker and far less hospitable in its out- 
ward aspect, had yet by an extraordinary epidemic, but 
a short time previous, been almost completely cleared 
of its barbarous tenants ? Was it not something more, 
also, than mere mortal error or human mistake, which, 
instead of bringing them within the limits prescribed in 
the patent they had procured in England, directed them 
to a shore on which they were to land upon their own 
responsibility and under their own authority, and thus 
compelled them to an Act, which has rendered Cape 
Cod more memorable than Runnymede, and the Cabin 
of the Mayflower than the proudest Hall of ancient 
Charter or modern Constitution — the execution of the 
first written original Contract of Democratic Self-Gov- 
ernment which is found in the annals of the World ? 

But the Pilgrims, I have said, had a power within 
them also. If God was not seen among them in the 
fire of a Horeb, or the earthquake of a Sinai, or the 
wind cleaving asunder the waves of the sea they were 
to cross, He was with them, at least, in the still, small 
voice. Conscience, Conscience, was the nearest to an 
earthly power which the Pilgrims possessed, and the 
freedom of Conscience the nearest to an earthly motive 
which prompted their career. It was Conscience, 
which "weaned them from the delicate milk of their 
Mother country and inured them to the difficulties of a 
strange land." It was Conscience, which made them 



246 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

"not as other men, whom small things could discourage, 
or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at 
home again." It was Conscience — that "robiir et ces 
triplex circa pectus" — which emboldened them to 
launch their fragile bark upon a merciless ocean, fear- 
less of the fighting winds and lowering storms. It 
was Conscience, which stiffened them to brave the perils, 
endure the hardships, undergo the deprivations of a 
howling, houseless, hopeless desolation. And thus, al- 
most in the very age when the Great Master of human 
nature, was putting into the mouth of one of his most 
interesting and philosophical characters, that well re- 
membered conclusion of a celebrated soliloquy — 

"Thus Conscience does make cozvards of us all, 
And thus the native hue of resolution 
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, 
And enterprises of great pith and moment 
With this regard, their currents turn awry, 
And lose the name of action — " 

this very Conscience, a clog and an obstacle indeed, 
to its foes, but the surest strength and sharpest spur 
of its friends, was inspiring a courage, confirming a 
resolution, and accomplishing an enterprise, of which 
the records of the world will be searched in vain to find 
a parallel. Let it never be forgotten, that it was Con- 
science, and that, not entrenched behind broad seals, 
but enshrined in brave souls, which carried through 
and completed the long baffled undertaking of settling 
the New England coast. 

But Conscience did more than this. It was that 
same still, small voice, which, under God, and through 
the instrumentality of the Pilgrims, pronounced the 
very Fiat of light in the creation of civilized society on 
this whole Northern Continent of America, exerting an 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 247 

influence in the process of that creation, compared with 
which all previous influences were but so many movings 
on the face of the waters. 

Let me not be thought, in this allusion and others 
like it in which I have already indulged, to slight the 
claims of the Virginia Colony, or to do designed injus- 
tice to its original settlers. There are laurels enough 
growing wild upon the graves of Plymouth, without 
tearing a leaf from those of Jamestown. New Eng- 
land does not require to have other parts of the country 
cast into shade, in order that the brightness of her own 
early days may be seen and admired. Least of all, 
would any son of New England be found uttering a 
word in wanton disparagement of "our noble, patriotic, 
sister Colony Virginia," as she was once justly termed 
by the Patriots of Faneuil Hall. There are circum- 
stances of peculiar and beautiful correspondence in the 
careers of Virginia and New England, which must 
ever constitute a bond of sympathy, affection and pride 
between their children. Not only did they form re- 
spectively the great Northern and Southern rallying- 
points of civilization on this Continent — not only was 
the most friendly competition, or the most cordial co- 
operation, as circumstances allowed, kept up between 
them during their early colonial existence — but who 
forgets the generous emulation, the noble rivalry with 
which they continually challenged and seconded each 
other in resisting the first beginnings of British aggres- 
sion, in the persons of their James Otises and Patrick 
Henrys ? Who forgets, that, while that resistance was 
first brought to a practical test in New England, at 
Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, fortune, as if 
resolved to restore the balance of renown between the 
two, reserved for the Yorktown of Virginia the last 
crowning victory of Independence ? Vv^ho forgets that, 



248 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

while the hand, by which the original Declaration of 
that Independence was drafted, was furnished by Vir- 
ginia, the tongue by which the adoption of that Instru- 
ment was defended and secured, was supplied by New 
England — a bond of common glory, upon which not 
death alone seemed to set his seal, but Deity, I had al- 
most said, to affix an immortal sanction, when the 
spirits by which that hand and tongue were moved, 
were caught up together to the clouds on the same great 
day of the Nation's Jubilee. Nor let me omit to allude 
to a peculiar distinction which belongs to Virginia 
alone. It is her preeminent honor and pride, that the 
name which the whole country acknowledges as that 
of a Father, she can claim as that of a Son — a name 
at which comparison ceases — to which there is nothing 
similar, nothing second — a name combining in its asso- 
ciations all that was most pure and godly in the nature 
of the Pilgrims, with all that was most brave and manly 
in the character of the Patriots — a name above every 
name in the annals of human liberty ! 

But I cannot refrain from adding, that not more does 
the fame of Washington surpass that of every other 
public character which America or the world at large, 
has yet produced, than the New England Colony, in its 
origin and its influences, its objects and its results, ex- 
cels that from which Washington was destined to 
proceed. 

In one point, indeed, and that, it is true, a point of 
no inconsiderable moment, the Colonies of Jamestown 
and Plymouth were alike. — Both were colonies of Eng- 
lishmen; — and in running down the history of our 
Country from its first colonization to the present hour, 
I need hardly say that no single circumstance can be 
found, which has exercised a more propitious and ele- 
vating influence upon its fortunes, than the English 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 249 

origin of its settlers. Not to take up time in discussing 
either the abstract adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon char- 
acter to the circumstances of a New Country, or its 
relative capacity for the establishment and enjoyment 
of Free Institutions, — the most cursory glance at the 
comparative condition, past or present, of those por- 
tions of the New World, which were planted by other 
nations, is amply sufficient to illustrate this idea. In- 
deed, our own Continent affords an illustration of it, 
impressed upon us anew by recent events in the Cana- 
dian Colonies, which renders any reference to the other 
entirely superfluous. The contrast between the social, 
moral and intellectual state of the two parts of North 
America which were peopled respectively by English- 
men and Frenchmen, has been often alluded to. But a 
comparison of their political conditions exhibits differ- 
ences still more striking. 

Go back to the period immediately preceding the 
Stamp Act, and survey the circumstances of the two 
portions of Country, as they then existed. Both are 
in a state of Colonial dependence on Great Britain. 
But the one has just been reduced to that state by force 
of arms. Its fields and villages have just been the 
scenes of the pillage and plunder which always march 
in the train of conquest — the allegiance of their owners 
has been violently transferred to new masters as the 
penalty of defeat — and to keep alive the more certainly 
the vindictive feelings which belong to the bosoms of 
a vanquished people, and to frustrate the more entirely 
the natural influences of time and custom in healing up 
the wounds which such a subjugation has inflicted, the 
laws of their conquerors are enacted and administered 
in a strange tongue, and one which continually reminds 
them that the yoke under which they have passed, is 
that of a Nation towards which they have an hereditary 



250 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

hatred. — The People of the other portion, on the con- 
trary, owe their relation to the common Sovereign of 
them both, to nothing but their own natural and volun- 
tary choice — feel towards the Nation over which he 
presides nothing but the attachment and veneration of 
children towards the parent of their pride, and are 
bound to it by the powerful ties of a common history, 
a common language, and a common blood. Tell me, 
now, which of the two will soonest grow impatient of 
its colonial restraint, soonest throw off its foreign 
subordination, and soonest assert itself free and inde- 
pendent ? 

And what other solution can any one suggest to the 
problem presented by the fact as it exists — the very re- 
verse of that which would thus have been predicted — 
what other clue can any one offer to the mystery, that 
the French Colonies should have remained, not entirely 
quietly, indeed, but with only occasional returns of in- 
effectual throes and spasms, up to this very hour, in a 
political condition which every thing would seem to 
have conspired to render loathsome and abhorrent — 
while the English Colonies, snapping alike every link 
either of love or of power, breaking every bond both 
of affection and authority, resolved themselves into an 
Independent Nation half a century ago, — what other 
explanation, I repeat, can any one give to this paradox 
fulfilled, than that which springs from a consideration 
of the comparative capacities for self -improvement and 
self-government of the Races by which they were 
planted? A common history, a common language, a 
common blood, were, indeed, links of no ordinary 
strength, between the Atlantic Colonies and the Mother 
Country. But that language was the language in 
which Milton had sung, Pym pleaded, and Locke rea- 
soned — that blood was the blood which Hampden had 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 251 

poured out on the plain of Chalgrove, and in which 
Sidney and Russell had weltered on the block of Mar- 
tyrdom — and that history had been the history of toil- 
ing, struggling, but still-advancing Liberty for a thou- 
sand years. Such links could only unite the free. They 
lost their tenacity in a moment, when attempted to be 
recast on the forge of despotism and employed in the 
service of oppression — nay, the brittle fragments into 
which they were broken in such a process, were soon 
moulded and tempered and sharpened into the very 
blades of a triumphant resistance. What more effec- 
tive instruments, what more powerful incitements, did 
our Fathers enjoy, in their revolutionary struggle, 
than the lessons afforded them in the language, the 
examples held up to them in the history, the prin- 
ciples, opinions and sensibilities flowing from the 
hearts and vibrating through the veins, which they in- 
herited from the very Nation against which they were 
contending! — Yes, let us not omit, even on this day, 
when we commemorate the foundation of a Colony 
which dates back its origin to British bigotry and Brit- 
ish persecution, even in this connection, too, when we 
are speaking of that contest for Liberty which owed 
its commencement to British oppression and British 
despotism, to express our gratitude to God, that old 
England was, still, our Mother Country, and to ac- 
knowledge our obligations to our British Ancestors for 
the glorious capabilities which they bequeathed us. 

But, with the single exception that both emigrated 
from England, the Colonies of Jamestown and Ply- 
mouth had nothing in common, and to all outward ap- 
pearances, the former enjoyed every advantage. The 
two Companies, as it happened, though so long an in- 
terval elapsed between their reaching America, left 
their native land within about a year of each other ; but 



252 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

under what widely different circumstances did they 
embark! The former set sail from the port of the 
Metropolis, in a squadron of three vessels, under an 
experienced Commander, under the patronage of a 
wealthy and powerful Corporation, and with an ample 
patent from the Crown. The latter betook themselves 
to their solitary bark, by stealth, under cover of the 
night, and from a bleak and desert heath in Lincoln- 
shire, while a band of armed horsemen, rushing down 
upon them before the embarkation was completed, made 
prisoners of all who were not already on board, and 
condemned husbands and wives, and parents and chil- 
dren, to a cruel and almost hopeless separation. 

Nor did their respective arrivals on the American 
shores, though divided by a period of thirteen years, 
present a less signal contrast. The Virginia Colony 
entered the harbor of Jamestown about the middle of 
May, and never could that lovely Queen of Spring have 
seemed lovelier, than when she put on her flowery kirtle 
and her wreath of clusters, to welcome those admiring 
strangers to the enjoyment of her luxuriant vegetation. 
There were no Mayflowers for the Pilgrims, save the 
name, written, as in mockery, on the stern of their 
treacherous ship. They entered the harbor of Ply- 
mouth on the shortest day in the year, in this last quar- 
ter of December, — and when could the rigid Winter- 
King have looked more repulsive, than when, shrouded 
with snow and crowned with ice, he admitted those 
shivering wanderers within the realms of his dreary 
domination ? 

But mark the sequel. From a soil teeming with 
every variety of production for food, for fragrance, 
for beauty, for profit, the Jamestown Colonists reaped 
only disappointment, discord, wretchedness. Having 
failed in the great object of their adventure — the dis- 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 253 

covery of gold — they soon grew weary of their condi- 
tion, and within three years after their arrival are 
found on the point of abandoning the Country. In- 
deed, they are actually embarked, one and all, with this 
intent, and are already at the mouth of the River, when, 
falling in with new hands and fresh supplies which 
have been sent to their relief, they are induced to return 
once more to their deserted village. 

But even up to the very year in which the Pilgrims 
landed, ten years after this renewal of their designs, 
they "had hardly become settled in their minds," had 
hardly abandoned the purpose of ultimately returning to 
England, and their condition may be illustrated by the 
fact, that in 1619 and again in 1621, cargoes of young 
women, (a commodity of which there was scarcely a 
sample in the whole plantation — and would to God, that 
all the trafilic in human flesh on the Virginian Coast 
even at this early period had been as innocent in itself 
and as beneficial in its results!) were sent out by the 
Corporation in London and sold to the planters for 
wives, at from one hundred and twenty to one hundred 
and fifty pounds of tobacco apiece ! 

Nor was the political condition of the Jamestown 
Colony much in advance of its social state. The Char- 
ter, under which they came out, contained not a single 
element of popular liberty, and secured not a single 
right or franchise to those who lived under it. And, 
though a gleam of freedom seemed to dawn upon them 
in 1 619, when they instituted a Colonial Assembly and 
introduced the Representative System for the first time 
into the New World, the precarious character of their 
popular institutions and the slender foundation of their 
popular liberties at a much later period, even as far 
down as 1671, may be understood from that extraordi- 
nary declaration of Sir William Berkeley, then Cover- 



254 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

nor of Virginia, to the Lords Commissioners : — 'T 
thank God, there are no free schools nor printing — and 
I hope we shall not have these hundred years; — for 
learning has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects 
into the world; and printing has divulged them, and 
libels against the best government. God keep us from 
both." 

But how was it with the Pilgrims? From a soil of 
comparative barrenness, they gathered a rich harvest 
of contentment, harmony and happiness. Coming to it 
for no purpose of commerce or adventure, they found 
all that they sought — religions freedom — and that made 
the wilderness to them like Eden, and the desert as the 
garden of the Lord. — Of quitting it, from the very 
hour of their arrival, they seem never once to have 
entertained, or even conceived, a thought. The first 
foot that leapt gently but fearlessly on Plymouth Rock 
was a pledge that there would be no retreating — tradi- 
tion tells us, that it was the foot of Mary Chilton. 
They have brought their wives and their little ones 
with them, and what other assurance could they give 
that they have come to their home? And accordingly 
they proceed at once to invest it with all the attributes 
of home, and to make it a free and a happy home. The 
Compact of their own adoption under which they 
landed, remained the sole guide of their government 
for nine years, and though it was then superseded by a 
Charter from the Corporation within whose limits they 
had fallen, it was a Charter of a liberal and compre- 
hensive character, and under its provisions they con- 
tinued to lay broad and deep the foundations of Civil 
Freedom. The trial by jury was established by the 
Pilgrims within three years after their arrival, and con- 
stitutes the appropriate opening of the first chapter of 
their legislation. The education of their children, as 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 255 

we have seen, was one of their main motives for leaving 
Holland, and there is abundant evidence that it was 
among the earliest subjects of their attention — while 
the planters of Massachusetts, who need not be distin- 
guished from the planters of Plymouth for any pur- 
poses of this comparison, founded the College at Cam- 
bridge in 1636 — set up a printing press at the same 
place in 1639, which "divulged," in its first workings 
at least, nothing more libellous or heretical than a 
Psalm-book and an Almanac — and as early as 1647 
had instituted, by an ever memorable Statute, that 
noble system of New England Free Schools, which 
constitutes at this moment the best security of Liberty, 
wherever Liberty exists, and its best hope, wherever it 
is still to be established. 

It would carry me far beyond the allowable limits 
of this Address, if, indeed, I have not already exceeded 
them, to contrast in detail, the respective influences 
upon our Country and, through it, upon the world, of 
these two original Colonies. The elements for such a 
contrast I have already suggested, and I shall content 
myself with only adding further upon this point, the 
recent and very remarkable testimony of two most in- 
telligent French travellers, whose writings upon the 
United States have justly received such distinguished 
notice on both sides the Atlantic. 

"I have already observed," says De Tocqueville, that 
"the origin of the American settlements may be looked 
upon as the first and most efficacious cause, to which 
the present prosperity of the United States may be at- 
tributed. . . . When I reflect upon the conse- 
quences of this primary circumstance, methinks, I see 
the destiny of America embodied in the first Puritan 
who landed on these shores, just as the human race was 
represented by the first man." 



256 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

*Tf we wished," says Chevalier, "to form a single 
type, representing the American character of the pres- 
ent moment as a single whole, it would be necessary to 
take at least three-fourths of the Yankee race and to 
mix it with hardly one-fourth of the Virginian." 

But the Virginia type was not complete when it first 
appeared on the coast of Jamestown, and I must not 
omit, before bringing these remarks to a conclusion, to 
allude to one other element of any just comparison be- 
tween the two Colonies. — The year 1620 was un- 
questionably the great Epoch of American Destinies. 
Within its latter half were included the two events 
which have exercised incomparably the most controlling 
influence on the character and fortunes of our Country. 
At the very time the Mayflower, with its precious bur- 
den, was engaged in its perilous voyage to Plymouth, 
another ship, far otherwise laden, was approaching the 
harbor of Virginia. It was a Dutch man-of-war, and 
its cargo consisted in part of tzvcnty slaves, which were 
subjected to sale on their arrival, and with which the 
foundations of domestic slavery in North America were 
laid. 

I see those two fate-freighted vessels, laboring under 
the divided destinies of the same Nation, and striving 
against the billows of the same sea, like the principles 
of good and evil advancing side by side on the same 
great ocean of human life. I hear from the one the 
sighs of wretchedness, the groans of despair, the curses 
and clankings of struggling captivity, sounding and 
swelling on the same gale, which bears only from the 
other the pleasant voices of prayer and praise, the 
cheerful melody of contentment and happiness, the glad, 
the glorious "anthem of the free." Oh, could some 
angel arm, like that which seems to guide and guard 
the Pilgrim bark, be now interposed to arrest, avert, 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 257 

dash down and overwhelm its accursed compeer ! But 
it may not be. They have both reached in safety the 
place of their destination. Freedom and Slavery, in 
one and the same year, have landed on these American 
shores. And American Liberty, like the Victor of an- 
cient Rome, is doomed, let us hope not for ever, to 
endure the presence of a fettered captive as a companion 
in her Car of Triumph ! 

Gentlemen of the New England Society in the City 
of New York — I must detain you no longer. In pre- 
paring to discharge the duty, which you have done me 
the unmerited honor to assign me in the celebration 
of this hallowed Anniversary, I was more than once 
tempted to quit the narrow track of remark which I have 
now pursued and indulge in speculations or discussions 
of a more immediate and general interest. But it 
seemed to me that if there was any day in the year 
which belonged of right to the past and the dead, this 
was that day, and to the past and the dead I resolved to 
devote my exclusive attention. But though I have ful- 
filled that resolution, as you will bear me witness, with 
undeviating fidelity, many of the topics which I had 
proposed to myself seem hardly to have been entered 
upon — some of them scarcely approached. The prin- 
ciples of the Pilgrims, the virtues of the Pilgrims, the 
faults of the Pilgrims — alas! there are enough always 
ready to make the most of these — the personal charac- 
ters of their brave and pious leaders, Bradford, Brew- 
ster, Carver, Winslow, Alden, Allerton, Standish, — the 
day shall not pass away without their names being once 
at least audibly and honorably pronounced — the grad- 
ual rise and progress of the Colony they planted, and 
of the old Commonwealth with which it was early in- 
corporated, the origin and growth of the other Colonies, 



2 58 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and the 
rest, which were afterwards included within the limits 
of New England, and many of the sons of all of which 
are doubtless present here this day — the history of New 
England as a whole, its great deeds and great men, its 
schools and scholars, its heroes and battle-fields, its 
ingenuity and industry, its soil, — hard and stony, in- 
deed, but of inestimable richness in repelling from its 
culture the idle, the ignorant and the enslaved, and de- 
veloping the energies of free, intelligent, independent 
labor — the influences of New England abroad as well 
as at home, its emigration, ever onward, with the axe 
in one hand and the Bible in the other, clearing out the 
wild growth of buckeye and hickory, and planting the 
trees of knowledge and of life, driving the buffalo from 
forest to lake, from lake to prairie, and from prairie to 
the sea, till the very memory of its existence would 
seem likely to be lost, but for the noble City, which its 
pursuers, pausing for an instant on their track, have 
called by its name, and founded on its favorite haunt — 
these and a hundred other themes of interesting and ap- 
propriate discussion, have, I am sensible, been quite 
omitted. But I have already exhausted your patience, 
or certainly my own strength, and I hasten to relieve 
them both. 

It has been suggested. Gentlemen, by one of the 
French Travellers, whose opinions I have just cited, 
that, though the Yankee has set his mark on the United 
States during the last half century, and though "he 
still rules the Nation," that yet, the physical labor of 
civilization is now nearly brought to an end, the physical 
basis of society entirely laid, and that other influences 
are soon about to predominate in rearing up the social 
superstructure of our Nation. I hail the existence of 
this Association, and of others like it in all parts of the 



ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 259 

Union, bound together by the noble cords of "friend- 
ship, charity and mutual assistance," as a pledge that 
New England principles, whether in ascendancy or 
under depression in the Nation at large, will never 
stand in need of warm hearts and bold tongues to cher- 
ish and vindicate them. But, at any rate, let us rejoice 
that they have so long pervaded the country and pre- 
vailed in her institutions. Let us rejoice that the basis 
of her society has been laid by Yankee arms. Let us 
rejoice that the corner-stone of our Republican edifice 
was hewn out from the old, original, primitive, Ply- 
mouth quarry. In what remains to be done, either in 
finishing or in ornamenting that edifice, softer and more 
pliable materials may, perhaps, be preferred — the New 
England granite may be thought too rough and un- 
wieldy — the architects may condemn it — the builders 
may reject it — but still, still, it will remain the deep 
and enduring foundation, not to be removed without 
undermining the whole fabric. And should that fabric 
be destined to stand, even when bad government shall 
descend upon it like the rains, and corruption come 
round about it like the floods, and faction, discord, dis- 
union, and anarchy blow and beat upon it like the 
winds, — as God grant it may stand forever! — it will 
still owe its stability to no more effective earthly influ- 
ence, than, THAT IT WAS FOUNDED ON PiLGRIM RoCK. 



NOTES 

Pages 225 and 227. — In this description, and in some other of 
the narrative portions of the Address, I have employed phrases 
and paragraphs gleaned here and there from the writings of 
Prince, Morton, and others, without deeming it necessary to dis- 
figure the pages by too frequent a use of the inverted commas. I 
might cite abundant authority for such a liberty. 



26o NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

P- 233. — For the opportunity of perusing this Dialogue, I am 
indebted to Rev. Alexander Young, by whom it was copied from 
the Plymouth Church Records. I am happy to be able to add, 
that Mr. Young is engaged in preparing for the press, a volume 
to be entitled "The Old Chronicles of the Plymouth Colony, col- 
lected partly from original records and unpublished manuscripts, 
and partly from scarce tracts, hitherto unknown in this Country," 
in which this Dialogue will be contained, and which will be, in 
fact, a history of the Plymouth People, written by themselves, 
from 1602 to 1624. Mr. Young confidently expects to be able 
to recover or restore the most valuable portion of Gov. Brad- 
ford's History, which was used by Prince and Hutchinson, but 
which disappeared during the War of the Revolution, and has 
been supposed to be irrevocably lost. 

P. 241. — Von Miiller, in his Universal History, speaks of "the 
monument apparently Punic, which was found some years ago in 
the forests behind Boston," and adds, "it is possible that some 
Tyrians or Carthaginians, thrown by storms upon unknown 
coasts, uncertain if ever the same tracts might be again discov- 
ered, chose to leave this monument of their adventures." He re- 
fers, without doubt, to the same Rock at Dighton, which the So- 
ciety of Northern Antiquaries in Denmark claim as conclusive 
evidence of the discovery of America by the Scandinavians. 

P. 254. — The distinction of being the first person that set foot 
on Plymouth Rock has been claimed for others beside Mary Chil- 
ton, and particularly for John Alden. But I could not resist the 
remark of Judge Davis on this point, in one of his notes to Mor- 
ton's Memorial. After quoting the language of another, that "for 
the purposes of the arts a female figure, typical of faith, hope, 
and charitj', is well adapted," — he observes, that "as there is a 
great degree of uncertainty on this subject, it is not only grate- 
ful, but allowable, to indulge the imagination, and we may expect 
from the friends of John Alden, that they should give place to 
the lady." 



THE ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL GREATNESS 

Prof. CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 
1841 



CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 
(1796- I 876.) 

The orator of 1841 was one of Dartmouth's professors, Charles 
Brickett Hadduck, a nephew of Daniel Webster. Mr. Hadduck 
was a native of New Hampshire and educated at Dartmouth 
College. Forced by ill health to give up the ministry, he re- 
turned to the college in 1817 as tutor, and was shortly elected 
to the chair of literature, rhetoric, philosophy, and political 
economy. A volume of "Addresses and Miscellaneous Writ- 
ings" was published in 1846. In 1850 Mr. Hadduck was ap- 
pointed minister to Portugal. He was a man of great public 
spirit, giving his time without stint to all matters of benefit to 
town or state. A portrait shows an impressive face, with 
heavy hair, straight nose, and deep-set eyes. 

Professor Brown, in writing of Mr. Hadduck, says: "As an in- 
structor I have never known a better. He was discriminating 
and quietly suggestive, guided by a taste that was nearly im- 
maculate. His scholarship was unobtrusive and his manner 
without ostentation. He made no boast of knowledge, but it 
was always sufficient, always fresh, always sound." 



DISCOURSE 



WINTER, which seems so like the death of the 
year, is, really, its birth — the season of buds and 
germs, insensibly and mysteriously maturing for the 
bloom and fragrance of Spring. 

The period of history, which preceded the discovery 
of America, is the Winter of modern civilization. The 
Truth, Beauty and Life, which have since opened and 
ripened on the renovated fields of the Old World, or 
in the virgin soil of the New, all lay folded up, and were 
nursed by invisible agencies, in the midst of the torpor 
and dreariness of the middle ages. 

To use a somewhat triter figure, men slept away the 
long, long night, that followed the brief bright day of 
classic art and philosophy. In this sleep of intellect, 
however, they dreamed — dreamed beautiful dreams. 
In their unquiet rest, they pursued unreal objects, with 
more than natural earnestness; fought imaginary foes 
with Quixotic valor; discussed unphilosophical ques- 
tions with unequalled acuteness and indomitable perti- 
nacity ; and enacted scenes of dazzling brilliancy, heroic 
passion, or chivalrous generosity, which have given in- 
spiration to ambition, and supplied material for History 
and Romance, Philosophy and Poetry, ever since. 

About the beginning of the sixteenth century, this 
moral winter broke up — day dawned on this night of a 
thousand years. 

263 



264 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

A bit of iron had been taught to point, with intelli- 
gent fidelity, to the pole, by day or night, by land or 
sea. A black powder had been invented, which imi- 
tated, at once, the terrific grandeur, and the scathing 
power of the thunder. The long-buried classics were 
exhumed. The Christian Scriptures began to be stud- 
ied with a free spirit. Mind was roused to unwonted 
effort, and was putting itself forth with youthful free- 
dom and enthusiasm. The great nations, situated upon 
the waters of Western Europe, hitherto separated and 
isolated from each other, cam.e into intimate and excit- 
ing relations. The effect of these various causes, each 
in itself sufficient to change the course of events, and 
all coming suddenly into action, was to produce a de- 
gree of agitation, and to develope phenomena of society, 
which history was never before called to record. It 
resembled the meeting of the rivers — the majestic 
swell, or the tumultuous ambition, of the sea, that rest- 
less congregation of the waters. 

The old limits were too narrow for the new energies 
and new enterprise of Europe. The Mediterranean and 
the Northern Seas had lost their terrors, and, conse- 
quently, their novelty and romance, also. The navi- 
gator, now fearless alike of nature and of man, boldly 
pushed his bark into unfrequented oceans. Vasco da 
Gama met and vanquished the terrible phantom, that 
had so long guarded the stormy Cape. Columbus, as 
if really inspired by the beautiful Hesper, to whose 
guardian Divinity our own epic Poet (would he had 
many such conceptions) has so happily assigned this 
latest Hesperia, and nearest to the setting sun, pursued 
his high calling, from court to court, and, with infinite 
faith and constancy, held on his way, till, with enrap- 
tured eye, he saw the shores of the New World. Most 
fortunate — most favored of mortals, how little we 
know thee! how little we honor thee by our regrets 



CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 265 

and our commiseration! Thou wast unkindly,- cruelly 
dealt with — denied even the poor privilege of engraving 
thy name upon the Continent which thy genius gave to 
the world. But who, that knows what is in man, and 
how Heaven bestows its richest gifts on him, who 
would not welcome the forgetfulness of Princes, the 
ingratitude of nations and the dungeons of Castile, for 
the moral triumph of that hour, when the great hope 
of thy life, so long delayed, was at last realized? The 
jealousies of statesmen pass away; the malice of rivals 
is not immortal; the great Continent itself will disap- 
pear. But the consciousness of that signal glory is part 
of thyself, and can never die. 

To the awakened nations of Western Europe, in this 
unexampled state of things, gazing with equal surprise 
on the brightening lights of ancient Italy and Greece, 
and holy Palestine, and on the undefined wonders of 
the new Hemisphere, it must have seemed almost as if 
Morning and Evening, in a playful freak, interchanging 
places, had conspired to adorn the day together — so 
like enchantment must have appeared to them the sunset 
of the East, and the dawn in the West. 

At this high-souled period, in this blushing "redolent 
springtime" of our civilization, Europe — Magna mater 
virum — sent over her Colonies to America; and the 
Continent opened its bosom to receive the best — Adam 
Smith has said, the only — gift which the New World 
owes to the Old, a race of great men. 

The principal nations entered into an earnest contest 
for priority and preeminence in the new found lands. 
And, in little more than a century, the coast had been 
surveyed from Mount Raleigh, in the north, "the clififs 
whereof were orient as gold," to 

"Where Magellan lifts his torch on high 
To light the meeting of the oceans." 



266 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

Of this seven thousand miles of coast a considerable 
part was sprinkled with European settlements, and its 
forests indented with smiling" bays of cultivation. 

The foremost, in this new field, were Spain, France 
and Great Britain, all leading- nations at the time, and 
in the subsequent history of Europe. 

To Spain, heroic, chivalrous, religious, already con- 
solidated under Ferdinand and Isabella ; still full of the 
energy which her original tribes had acquired among 
the hills of Asturia and the Pyrenees, and fresh from 
the conquest of Grenada, which had just crowned a 
war of seven centuries for the recovery of their native 
land — to Spain, then at the head of Europe, and the 
first to plant colonies in America, fell the vast territory, 
which stretches from the forty-third degree of South, to 
the thirty-seventh degree of North latitude, exceeding 
the Russian Empire in extent; possessing the utmost 
variety of climate and scenery, a fresh vitality of soil, 
and inexhaustible mineral riches ; and occupied by timid 
natives, who, stupefied by the dreadful energy of Euro- 
pean warfare, yielded up their treasures almost without 
a struggle, and resigned their entire country to a mere 
handful of armed men. 

The French, alike ambitious of foreign dominion, in- 
dustrious, frugal ; luxuriating in the garden of Europe, 
and yet easy of adaptation to the exigencies of life and 
the accidents of fortune; capable equally of profound 
science and exquisite refinement; prone always to lib- 
eral sentiments and grand achievement, laid claim to 
the fairest portion of North America. Her navigators 
and missionaries, ambitious of the national honor, or 
stimulated by Christian charity, had traced the Missis- 
sippi almost from its fountains to the gulf, and had fol- 
lowed the St. Lawrence, through its long chain of in- 
land seas, to where but a hand's breadth of land, as it 



CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 267 

were, separates the Falls of St. Anthony, the head of 
navigation on the Mississippi, from the western extrem- 
ity of Lake Superior. 

Never, surely, was so magnificent a theatre of colo- 
nial enterprise presented to a people. Over the im- 
mense and fertile valleys, watered by those vast streams, 
private enterprise had caused the Lilies of France to 
nod in peaceful supremacy. But, alas for the succes- 
sors of the great Louis, over this broad and beautiful 
domain, other lords were destined to have dominion. 

To England, besides a precarious foothold in the 
frozen north, the right of discovery had given not quite 
all the coast from Halifax to Florida — the shore only 
of a fraction of the northern half of the continent — a 
narrow, irregular belt of land, between the mountains 
and the sea, which the Virgin Queen, who was pleased 
to compliment the solitude of her maiden throne by giv- 
ing it a name, could she now revisit the scene of her 
wizard empire, might survey, in its length and breadth, 
in hardly more time than was taken up in her Maj- 
esty's "Progress" from Hampton Court to Kenilworth 
Castle. 

The record of the progress and results of these great 
colonial enterprises is the most instructive and the most 
exciting passage of history. It is crowded with great 
truths and romantic incidents — ^truths, which shine as 
beacon lights, from the annals of Marshall, Grahame 
and Sparks; incidents, which give a brilliant coloring 
and pathetic interest to the eloquent pictures of Robert- 
son and Bancroft. It opens wider views, than are any 
where else exhibited, of the social capacities of man; 
and excites higher hopes of the destinies of the race. 

It is now exactly three hundred years since Spanish 
heroes with incredible courage, and all but miraculous 
success, completed the conquest of the last of the seven 



268 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

great empires which, at the time of its discovery, occu- 
pied the Southern portion of America. 

The descendants of the Spanish colonists do not, 
probably, fall short of six millions. And what have 
they done? what one great point have they gained? 
They inhabit the best watered, the healthiest, the rich- 
est, the most picturesque peninsula on the map of the 
world. They have enjoyed the lights of modern know- 
ledge and Christianity. They inherit a copious and cul- 
tivated language. They have had access to one of the 
rich literatures of the old world. The art of printing 
was introduced among them before the Pilgrims emi- 
grated; and, in 1700, they had published more than all 
the northern colonies together. Yet, it can hardly be 
said, that, in three centuries, they have improved the 
morals, or advanced the civilization, or, in any material 
respect, bettered the condition of this fair but unfor- 
tunate part of the earth. The injustice and ferocity of 
their unprovoked warfare upon the natives, are atoned 
for by no regulated Christian societies, rising on the 
ruins of ancient superstition, and gladdening the 
gloomy path of conquest. Patriotism has not with- 
held her sacrifices; humanity has pleaded through elo- 
quent and holy lips; the sympathy and the prayers of 
all the free have been cordially proffered to them ; trea- 
sure has been expended, by them, beyond calculation; 
blood has been shed in rivers. But not one useful insti- 
tution has been permanently established; not one new 
art, invented ; not one new truth, discovered. The trav- 
eller, among the undeciphered ruins of an ancient civili- 
zation, which impart a solemn grandeur to their aerial 
plains, wearied with the alternations of anarchy and 
despotism, and disgusted with the mockeries of Reli- 
gion, is ready to invoke the resurrection of Mexico and 
Peru, of Montezuma and the Incas. And, as if in retri- 



CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 269 

bution for the wrongs inflicted on an unoffending peo- 
ple, the parent state, herself, has been impoverished by 
the very wealth of her possessions ; degraded by the in- 
strument of her aggrandizement ; enfeebled by the acces- 
sion of power. 

France followed Spain in the career of colonization. 
French emigrants were early settled in Florida; on the 
St. Lawrence, from the ocean to the Lakes ; and thence 
down the Mississippi and its branches, to the Gulf ; thus 
making a continuous line of hamlets and towns along 
these great waters, and through the very heart of these 
wooded plateaus and ocean savannas, from the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence to the Mediterranean sea of America. 

Of these settlements, suggested originally by patriot- 
ism and religion, and conducted with comparative hu- 
manity, not one maintains, at this distance of time, its 
original French character. In America, just as in the far 
east and in Europe itself, power has been gradually and 
sensibly passing into the hands of the Anglo-Saxon race. 

The most unmixed French population, on this side 
the sea, lines, with its unvarying aspect and its unenter- 
prising cultivation, the shores of the St. Lawrence from 
Quebec to Montreal. Here, in a beautiful valley, 
fringed on one side by the verdant banks of this noble 
river, and on the other by primitive forests, that nearly 
shade their narrow meadows, this contented and ineffi- 
cient people, with some of the best blood of Europe in 
their veins, like the sons and daughters of Abyssinia in 
the Happy Valley, "pleased with each other and with 
themselves," live without achievement or ambition. Be- 
yond the daily supply of daily wants, they seem to 
dream of nothing better for themselves than a pipe and 
a fiddle; and nothing better for their children than to 
divide the old farm between them, and live as their 
fathers lived before them. 



270 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

Neither Spain nor France has, at present, a foot of 
land on our continent. Nor has either of these original 
proprietors of nearly all its best soil, the pride to see a 
single colony of hers enjoying an established govern- 
ment of its own, and cherishing, with filial gratitude, 
or generous emulation, the literature and arts of the 
parent country. The names of some scores of rivers, 
mountains and cities, and these disfigured often by a 
foreign pronunciation, are almost the only memorials 
of their splendid colonial enterprises which either of 
them would care to recognize. 

How different the destiny of the English colonies. 
England, occupied with engrossing objects at home, 
was behind her rivals in the west by half a century. 
She was shut up to a territory comparatively small, ster- 
ile and austere. Yet the few, unaided adventurers, who 
planted themselves between Cape Fear and Passama- 
quoddy Bay, have, in little more than two centuries, 
increased to seventeen millions. They have, I may say, 
invented a free government. They have maintained 
popular liberty for more than two hundred years. They 
have a commerce second only to that of the "Queen of 
the Northern Seas." And, though separated from the 
seats of transatlantic power, by three thousand miles of 
ocean, they claim to be respected in the counsels of the 
remotest member of the European family of nations. 
Our western boundary, which originally ran along the 
nearest highlands, has, like the visible horizon, fled be- 
fore us, as we have advanced, till, at length, the sun rises 
in our own seas, and, in our own seas, sinks to rest. 
We are spreading free institutions, popular education, 
and Protestant Christianity over an undisputed domain, 
four times greater, in extent, than Spain, France and 
Great Britain together. 

Of this aspiring and noble lineage. Gentlemen, are 



CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 271 

we, who meet to celebrate "Forefathers' Day," in the 
city of New Amsterdam. 

The remainder of the hour, which your kindness has 
assigned to me on this occasion, how can I better occupy 
than by inviting your attention to a cursory view of 
some of THE PRINCIPAL SOURCES of the character and 
the progress, which it has been our fortune, as a people, 
thus to present to the study of the historian and the 
instruction of mankind ? 

It is not Fate, it is not accident. Gentlemen, which 
has made this wide difference in the history of the set- 
tlers on these shores. 

The present prosperous condition, and the glorious 
prospects of our country, are the natural growth of 
seeds early sown. They are the unforced development 
of germs of success and greatness that were brought 
over with Smith, and Winslow, and Cotton, and 
Hooker, and Davenport. They found here all they 
wanted, a vital soil, a pure air, and room to grow. 

Our expansion has been mainly from two centres, 
Virginia and New England. These primitive settle- 
ments were equally English — offshoots from the same 
stock. They drew their blood from common ancestors. 
They spoke a common language. They possessed a 
common inheritance in the literature and history of the 
parent state. They brought with them the same feel- 
ing of filial regard for the home they loved and left 
beyond the sea. They were equally of the seventeenth 
century, and of the reformed church. And here the 
parallel ends. 

The leading men, in the two communities, were of 
different ranks in society. The titled and high-born, 
for the most part, went to the south. The New Eng- 
land colonists were nearly all of the middle class of 
Englishmen. They differed, also, in the degree of 



2^2 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

reformation to which they had gone in reHgion. The 
Church of England was represented in Virginia; the 
Pilgrims were Protestants of the Protestants. Their 
ideas of civil government were equally unlike. The 
former had no antipathy to the Stuarts; the latter had 
strong democratic sympathies and tendencies. They 
emigrated for different ends; the Virginian for wealth, 
or the love of adventure, or the honor of old England ; 
the New Englander for a place ever so remote, some 
quiet nook, where he might enjoy his own religion in 
his own way. They took up their abode in different 
latitudes and on different soils. 

Both Virginia and New England have acted con- 
spicuous parts in our history. Both have produced 
great men in our public councils, and in every line of 
life. Each has borne its part in the new development 
of humanity in the New World. And each can afford 
to award to the other its full meed of praise. 

But it can hardly be denied, that, of the seventeen 
millions of people, who are spreading themselves over 
our two million square miles of territory, by far the 
greatest number are of New England origin. The 
great Western world is full of her sons. They abound 
in the towns and places of business, the schools, col- 
leges, and professions of the whole country. Your own 
city, the emporium of America, the pride of commerce, 
the nurse of enterprise, in which so many races meet, 
and from which radiate moral and Christian influences, 
to gladden the remotest dwellings of men, gives proof 
irrefragable of the permeating and prolific spirit of New 
England. 

The peculiarities of American character — our distinc- 
tive national features — are New England. The Vir- 
ginian belongs more to the Old World. His solitary 
manor, his feudal hospitality, his chivalrous honor and 



CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 273 

frankness, his lofty bearing, his amusements even, his 
hounds and his horses, all associate him with the 
knights and cavaliers of England. The ashes of Ra- 
leigh and Smith sleep in the bosom of their native 
island; but their high souls are reproduced still in the 
country of which one of them said, "Heaven and earth 
seem never to have agreed better to frame a place for 
man's commodious and delightful habitation." 

Nothing is more difficult than to draw broad lines of 
distinction between portions of the same people. No- 
where is it more hazardous to attempt it than among us. 
Our migratory habits, the easy and frequent intercourse 
of all parts of the country, our common institutions of 
government and education, are constantly counteracting 
local influences and associations, and tend always to the 
production of a uniform national character. 

Still, the cheerful industry, the hardy enterprise, the 
ingenuity, the calculation, the self-reliance, the thrift, 
which distinguish the occidental form of Saxon civili- 
zation, have, beyond dispute, their seat and their source, 
chiefly, in the land of the Pilgrims. The traits, by 
which we are most known abroad, and most clearly dis- 
criminated, as a peculiar people, are Yankee traits. 

The very offences and foibles of our character are 
mostly of New England origin. To drive a bargain, 
to ask questions, to take liberties with gentlemen, to 
guess, whistle and whittle, are really Yankee traits. 
They are so, because, in certain circumstances, they nat- 
urally grow out of the same constitution of the man, 
which fits him to level the forest with his axe ; to cover 
the rock with verdure ; to ply every bay of every ocean 
with his oar; to attack and subdue the whale, in his 
own element, while the sea is boiling like a pot about 
him, and neither land nor ship is to be seen ; and to lead 
in so many of the moral enterprises of the world. In 



274 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

the New England gentleman there is as perfect self- 
possession, as delicate personal intercourse, as honor- 
able bearing, as adorn life any where. But men instinct 
with freedom, vital in every part, are schooled to com- 
posure and courtesy only by the stern discipline of cul- 
tivated life. How much this refining discipline is en- 
joyed in New England, a stranger would be surprised 
to see, not only in her cities and larger towns, but 
hardly less even in the sweet villages, which give an 
air of humanity to her wild streams and green moun- 
tains. The gross, little traits of the real Jonathan are 
the vulgar development of that spirit of progress, that 
love of knowledge, that impatience of rest, that liberty, 
which are the pledges, because they are real elements, 
of greatness. 

We may wish it were otherwise. One is reasonably 
ashamed to be awkward, though it be only because he 
does not know how to stand still. It is a pity that we 
ever violate the rules of good breeding, though in the 
innocency of our hearts. Far be it from me to justify 
the murder of the king's English, albeit without malice 
aforethought, or to suggest an apology even for the 
petty mischief perpetrated with the penknife. We con- 
fess to the charge ; we bare our backs to the lash ; happy, 
if these are our chief est sins. It is a mercy that they 
are so harmless. I recollect but one instance of any 
fatal consequence, and that was the ever-to-be-regretted 
misfortune of the eloquent and amiable consort of Rip 
Van Winkle, who is recorded, I think, to have broken 
a blood-vessel, in a fit of passion at a New England 
pedlar. 

The character of our New England ancestors may, 
without over-refinement, be resolved into two princi- 
ples A PECULIAR SENSE OF INDIVIDUALITY ) AND A PE- 
CULIAR FEELING OF SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP TO GOD. 



CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 275 

These are, indeed, characteristics of English mind — 
of free Christian mind everywhere. They are no other- 
wise peculiar to New England, than as they have ex- 
isted there in unusual simplicity and intensity. They 
have been developed there more freely and more har- 
moniously than elsewhere; unchecked in their natural 
action; unencumbered by existing institutions. They 
have, there, had to contend with no traditionary preju- 
dices, no artificial states of society. Twin daughters 
of Knowledge and Faith, they grew up together in our 
clear mountain air, and by the shore of the same sea, 
which rolled in the bay and froze on the rocks, when 
the Pilgrims landed from the Mayflower. 

The great problem of life has been to maintain the 
true union and the true distinction of humanity and 
Divinity. Men are prone either to annihilate them- 
selves, that they may honor God, or to exalt themselves 
by forgetting Him. The first extreme is Fatalism, and 
leads either to inaction, or to fanaticism. The other 
extreme is Presumption, the parent of inconsistency, 
folly and weakness. 

The Reformation was itself a great struggle for the 
more perfect union of these two elements of human 
character. The individual had been lost in the Church 
and the State. The man had been allowed no distinct 
personality, no reason, no will, of his own. He was 
not esteemed a soul in himself — but a member of the 
common mind — not an integer, but a fraction. He 
might think; but only as he was taught. He was ex- 
pected to act, but only as he was bid. His individuality 
was thus merged in authority. The philosophy of the 
system was a kind of Pantheism of man. It admitted 
his existence, and denied his personality. 

Infidelity, to which unregulated reason rushed, under 
the intoxication of suddenly acquired liberty, and 



276 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

which, at one time, threatened the destruction of both 
reHgion and government, is the opposite extreme. It 
severed the golden chain that draws man upward to his 
God, and left the human mind to waste itself in blind 
endeavors after an unknown good, to feel, in the dark, 
for what, after all, it more than insinuated is never to 
be found. 

In England this great contest ended, at length, in the 
establishment of a national Protestant Church; a sys- 
tem of worship so evangelical in its doctrine, so beau- 
tiful in its ritual, so reverent in its forms, that a con- 
siderate man would hardly have meditated a change. 
The Puritans themselves did not, at first, entertain the 
thought of a separate worship. They only prayed to 
be tolerated; or, if they must conform, to be indulged 
with the omission of certain forms of expression, and 
certain ceremonies, which savored of Rome. Failing 
in this, and driven by tyranny to the extreme limit of 
endurance, they left the Church and the kingdom. 

It was a great struggle, and a great determination. 
When I read that the little company, who thus fled 
with the ark of liberty, to the free States of Holland, 
and thence to the freer forests of America, were all 
young men, most of them from twenty to thirty, I feel 
how wicked, and how impotent, is that authority which 
denies to man a personal and moral independence. 

The consequence of this movement, in the north of 
England, was a fuller development of the right of pri- 
vate judgment, a higher estimate of intelligent moral 
existence, a nobler idea of the ends of all order, civil and 
religious, and a juster apprehension of the means of 
social happiness, than had ever before been attained. It 
taught us to attach a higher character to life, by dis- 
covering in it nobler elements. Man, in any form, and 
in any stage of his existence, was no longer regarded 



CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 277 

as a thing, or a creature, or a subject; he became a 
spiritual independent being, with sacred capacities, with 
inviolable rights and untransferable responsibilities. 
Standing erect on the basis of his own conscience, he 
looked over and above all principalities and powers to 
the throne of God. 

Such, in the practical philosophy of the Pilgrims, 
was the idea of man — a great idea, though to us so ob- 
vious. This alone, however, did not suffice to fit them 
for their high calling. This idea of man wanted a coun- 
terpart in the idea of God, Giving, therefore, to man 
this absolute finite moral being, they ascribed to God 
absolute infinite moral being — intelligent Sovereignty 
and Free Grace. Thus they brought into immediate 
contact and practical harmony the two opposite poles of 
human nature — action and submission; freedom and 
destiny; individuality and dependence. I speak not 
here as a metaphysician. I care not to meddle with the 
theology of the Pilgrims as a system ; I look at it only 
as an historical element of their character. They, like 
the Huguenots of France, undoubtedly belonged to the 
school of Geneva. But, whatever may be thought of 
the metaphysics of the disciples or the master, we know, 
as an historical fact, that no men have held stronger 
opinions upon human freedom than they, who, at the 
same time, believed in a special Providence, a spiritual 
adoption to an intimate relationship to God, an election 
of grace to accomplish important purposes in the world. 
They felt themselves to have been divinely called. 
They saw nothing in life but a mission, a fulfilment of 
the purposes and promises of Heaven. Erecting them- 
selves on this lofty sense of the supernatural, the in- 
finite, the Divine, with the book of promise in their 
hands, and the faith of Abraham in their hearts, noth- 
ing was impossible to them; they could do all things; 



278 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

they could bear all things. In the beautiful and touch- 
ing letter of Robinson to the Church of Plymouth, 
written immediately after the mortality of the first win- 
ter, which carried off full half their numbers, "In a 
battle," says this apostolic man, "it is not to be looked 
for but that divers should die." When one after an- 
other of their little band fell a victim to death, it is 
affecting to observe the simple entry made in their 
journal, "This day died" such and such an one. And 
when, in the following summer, the Mayflower was 
preparing to return, notwithstanding the sickness, and 
sufferings, and mortality of the preceding winter, not 
one man, not one woman was ready to go back. 

These ideas of man and of God, as they pre-supposed 
THOUGHT, so they nourished it. Thought, reflection, 
the study of ourselves, and our great spiritual relations, 
are the elements of such ideas. The free use of our own 
intellects, the unrestrained action of Christian senti- 
ments, constituted, in an eminent degree, the ideal of 
man, in our fathers' estimation. Hence their peculiar, 
characteristic self-respect — the honor they put upon 
their own nature; a feeling, which, though sometimes it 
may wear the semblance of disrespect to authority, to 
age, to merit, is, nevertheless, among the first principles 
of all dignified and lofty action, all enthusiasm for lib- 
erty, and all genuine charity. 

Hence their zeal for popular instruction, for intelli- 
gent preaching, for academic education. And hence, 
what was, perhaps, of more influence than any one 
thing beside, their singular domestic discipline; a dis- 
cipline, which gave to the house of a Pilgrim father 
an order that likened it to a camp; a culture, that lik- 
ened it to a school ; and a worship that made it a Bethel. 

Every town of fifty families was, by law, obliged to 
maintain a schoolmaster ; and when the number reached 



CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 279 

a hundred, a grammar school, where young men might 
be fitted for the University, an institution in actual op- 
eration at Cambridge, and fostered by all the New Eng- 
land Colonies, within twenty years from the landing at 
Plymouth. Every town had a place of worship and a 
minister of the Gospel. When new swarms went out 
from the parent hive, they settled together in some 
sunny meadow, or on some mountain stream ; and thus 
formed a village, a compact neighborhood, for the ex- 
press purpose of enjoying a common school and a com- 
mon worship. The southern colonists, from the nature 
of their agriculture, lived dispersed and widely sepa- 
rated. They had no convenient little centres, with a 
mill, a blacksmith's shop, a store, a schoolhouse, a 
church, and a parsonage; where the people of a town 
are accustomed to meet, to discuss the public interests, 
to exercise their civil rights, to learn and to worship 
together. 

These facilities for popular improvement in New 
England were rendered doubly efficient by the fact, that 
many of the first emigrants were not only pious but edu- 
cated men, scholars as well as divines and politicians. 
And their talents and acquisitions were all consecrated 
to the enterprise in which they had embarked. Their 
conversation, their preaching, their writings, were all 
imbued with the Pilgrim spirit ; all tended to throw over 
the original design of the Colonies, and their Heaven- 
directed history, an air at once of romance and of in- 
spiration, and to give to the first period of the settle- 
ment the character and influence of a golden age. The 
number of journals, sermons, histories, and other 
works, published among them before the end of the 
century, and almost all adapted to impress the features 
of the Pilgrims, deeply and indelibly, upon their pos- 
terity, is scarcely credible. All this while the southern 



28o NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

people had few schools, and only here and there a place 
of religious worship. Down nearly to the Revolution, 
they sent their sons, for the most part, abroad for edu- 
cation. Even New York had not a college, and few 
grammar schools : New York, the daughter of republi- 
can Holland, of the lineage of De Ruyter and Van 
Tromp, of Grotius and Erasmus, of Rubens, Rem- 
brandt, and Vandyck; New York, a notable house- 
keeper, a princely benefactress of the Church and the 
poor, a model of the severer virtues, and rich in lordly 
patents ; now, of a long time, wedded to New England, 
and peopling her own broad domain, and the farthest 
west, with the mingled excellences of both. 

It is easy to see, therefore, how the philosophy of 
the Pilgrims, their village population, their institutions 
of learning, their religious worship, their domestic in- 
struction, and the Press, there first introduced, taken in 
connection with the Providential fact, that nearly all 
the leading men, who came over in the first ship, sur- 
vived the maladies and privations of the first year, and 
lived to extreme old age, sensible and venerable memo- 
rials of the spirit of the primitive settlement — it is plain 
how all these things conspired to perpetuate a distinct 
and strongly marked character of intelligence and piety 
in this part of the country. 

The principles which thus fostered knowledge and 
religion, and brought out the natural fruits of both in 
the history of New England, had an effect no less re- 
markable on the spirit of civil and ecclesiastical gov- 
ernment. These same principles naturally fixed the 
limits of both : they are, in truth, the very elements of 
Democracy, in Church and state. Every Puritan is a 
king; his theory of life is free; his spirit is unbound. 
The institutions and administration of the Pilgrims 
came nearer to realizing this theory, in practice, than 



CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 281 

men had ever come before. Intolerance and narrow- 
ness do, indeed, deform their character. But these 
grievous fauhs of theirs, like the spots on the face of 
the sun, are rendered visible only by their own light. 
Their great guide and pioneer knew not everything. 
He burned Servetus, for aught I know. And what if 
he had burned the Alps and the Lake of Geneva? It 
would still be true that, with all his high notions of the 
Sovereignty and Decrees of God, his soul was liberal 
and large; he was a real Democrat; one of the freest 
of the free, and a teacher of freedom. I come not here, 
gentlemen, to scan, with microscopic jealousy, the frail- 
ties of such men. Our Fathers were not faultless : they 
never arrogated perfection to themselves. But they 
saw in part; and, as far as was given them to see, they 
carried out, in their civil and ecclesiastical administra- 
tion, the great maxim, so simple and so beautiful, be- 
cause so consonant to the analogies of Providence, that 
the least possible government is the best — in other 
words, that the true theory of society is to rely, mainly, 
on the natural excitements to action, the instincts, the 
passions, the reason, and the conscience: and to regu- 
late these, by legal enactments, only so far as, by this 
very regulation itself, to secure, to each and all, the 
utmost practicable liberty. And I have no patience 
with the spirit, which, from this vantage ground of re- 
trospection, looks back to the Pilgrim age only to think 
of the witches and the Quakers. Let us rather, like 
filial brothers, be seen walking reverently backward, to 
cover the shame of the Patriarchs, the fathers, in the 
Providence of God, of a new race in a new world. 

Other and more particular illustrations of these pri- 
mary elements of the Pilgrim character, in the features 
and spirit of our New England Society, present them- 
selves; but I may only allude to a few of them. 



282 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

Habitual thoughtfulness, the conscious possession of 
personal attributes of power and responsibility, make 
excellent pioneers of civilization — happy dwellers in the 
woods, cheerful borderers; because they open resources 
in a man's own arm, in his own bosom and in his own 
home. Many a New England mother has charmed the 
livelong day, in the depths of the forest, with as joyous 
music as ever flowed from hearts made gay by the bril- 
liant festivities of the city. Many a New England fa- 
ther, after a day of solitary toil in subduing the reluc- 
tant wilderness, has "welcomed cheerful evening in" 
with a sweet sentiment of home and a glad spirit. 

The same traits of mind are apt to write, in strong 
lines, upon the face, a character of seriousness, reserve, 
caution, and, it may be, ungracious independence; for 
they lead us to attach importance chiefly to the essential 
man. They beget a love of simplicity and sincerity, a 
carelessness of appearances, an indifference to forms; 
and communicate, sometimes, an air of freedom, per- 
haps of rudeness, where there may be no want of genu- 
ine good sense and good feeling. 

To these same causes may be traced our love of home. 
To superficial observers, the more intelligent even, as 
Marryat and Chevalier, the spirit of enterprise, so prev- 
alent among us, seems inconsistent with strong domes- 
tic attachments. That young men and young women 
should be true lovers of home, and yet fly from it, in 
their teens, to the ends of the land, and the solitudes 
of the desert, seems a paradox, and yet how true ! You 
know, gentlemen, how the spirit of enterprise, which 
follows the bright promises of ambition, or wealth, or 
charity, to the world's end, consists with, O yes, invigo- 
rates your fond attachment to your father's house. I 
need not tell you how all your tenderest sensibilities 
cling around the spot of your birth, with more and more 



CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 283 

tenacity, the farther, in place or time, you are removed 
from it; how the heart yearns to hold in your own 
name, and to transmit, in your own line, the old home- 
stead, with its spreading elm, its noisy rivulet and its 
brown hills, the scene of your early industry, and the 
final resting place of your early friends. The heart 
wants visible memorials to fasten upon. It requires a 
centre to revolve about. And we may be assured, that, 
just in proportion as our early habits have been formed 
by intelligence, by religious principle, by domestic or- 
der, by the interchange of delicate sentiments and kind 
feelings around a common fireside, and at a common 
altar, shall we be bound by inextinguishable ties, to our 
native spot. The happy daughter of the East, grown 
old amid the bloom and exuberance of the Great Valley, 
still sighs for the sterility of New England. How 
often the son of our barren hills, when the enterprises 
of ambition are concluded, and the energies of life are 
exhausted, returns, at last, to repose his dying heart, 
where the heart of his father ceased to beat, and to lay 
his cold remains close by her to whose side he clung in 
infancy, and in whose bosom he was nourished and 
sheltered. 

To these causes may we not ascribe, also, the gene- 
rosity and hospitality of New England? Yes, the 
hospitality and the generosity of the money-making, 
money-saving Yankees. There is pecuniary littleness, 
there is social meanness, there is lean and hungry ava- 
rice in New England — one of the few settlements made 
on these shores, unprompted by ambition for wealth. 
But what supplies the sources of generosity ? Is it not 
economy? Is it not providence, calculation, improve- 
ment? And what, if the habit of accumulation be- 
comes, sometimes, a passion, a vice even ? It only proves 
the existence of the virtue, of which it is but the excess 



284 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

and abuse. I grant you, we are not a people prodigal 
of other men's bitter earnings. We are not profuse, to 
wastefulness and self-exhaustion, of wealth acquired 
by wrong and outrage upon nature and humanity. We 
earn our daily bread by the sweat of the brow. Within 
doors and without, in the country and in the town, all 
things, with us, are full of labor. No man is above it. 
No man is ashamed of it. , 

The fruits of this ever active industry, and this ever- 
watchful frugality which goes hand in hand with it, are 
not accumulation merely, with parsimony and sordid 
avarice by its side. These fruits are still more conspicu- 
ous in a charity as liberal, a hospitality as heartfelt, as 
any society of men can boast of. Is there anywhere 
ampler, or more tasteful provision for the public con- 
venience? Are private dwellings, from the whited farm 
house to the marble mansion of the town, anywhere 
more beautiful ? Are nobler structures, anywhere, dedi- 
cated to education or religion ? Is the poor man better 
fed, are his children better educated elsewhere? What 
wealth has reared those asylums for the blind and the 
insane? Whose earnings have sprinkled over the land 
refuges for the orphan, the superannuated seaman, the 
friendless sick? Who endowed our frequent universi- 
ties, enriched with the learning of ages and with the 
instruments of all science? What feeds the thousand 
streams which flow out from New England, to make 
the world glad, and which, like her living streams of 
emigration, leave abundance still behind ? Are the na- 
tion's guests received with greater munificence, or wel- 
comed more heartily, in any part of the land? Are 
sweeter charities opened to the private friend, or more 
grateful courtesies bestowed upon the stranger, in any 
country? We do, indeed, know how blessed it is to 
receive; but we know, also, how much inore blessed it is 
to give. 



CHARLES BRICKETT HADDUCK 285 

Of the influence of the scenery and soil of New Eng- 
land, in giving energy to the original principles of her 
character, I have not time to speak. I may not trespass 
farther on your patience, than simply to say, that Na- 
ture and Religion never co-operated better to produce 
an independent and a believing spirit — a self-reliance, 
which hardly betrays consciousness of independence; 
and a dependence, which could not be increased, if we 
had, ourselves, no part to act. Freedom is the very 
genius of our hills; and the hills are God's unhewn 
altars. 

Gentlemen, I have no more to say for the land of the 
Pilgrims; happy, most happy, if I have been able, in 
any degree to revive in you a grateful and a proud re- 
membrance of the pleasant place of your birth — the 
sunny hill-sides and smiling villages of New England 
— the homes you have left, but have not ceased to love 
— the scenes of your baptism, and the sepulchres of 
your fathers. 



THE ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL GREATNESS 

GEORGE B. CHEEVER 
1842 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 
(1807-1876.) 

The orator of the celebration at the Tabernacle in 1842 was the 
Rev. George B. Cheever, a native of Maine and a graduate of 
Bowdoin. As a young man in his first pastorate at Salem, 
Massachusetts, he sprang suddenly into notice through his re- 
markable brochures, "Amos Giles's Distillery" and "Deacon 
Jones's Brewery." These startling attacks on the liquor traffic 
were fiercely resented, not alone by those engaged in the busi- 
ness, but by the majority in the community, and such was then 
the state of public opinion that the young man was sentenced 
to thirty days in the Salem jail. Soon after this affair Mr. 
Cheever was called to New York, where, in the pastorates, first 
of the Allen Street Church, then of the Church of the Puritans, 
he spent forty powerful years. Among his published works 
should be mentioned an edition of "Pilgrim's Progress" and 
"The Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth." 



ADDRESS 



SIR WILLIAM JONES, among the multiplicity of 
his compositions, has left an ode commencing with 
the following question : JVhat constitutes a State? This 
question comprehends my subject. I propose to dwell 
upon the Elements of National Greatness. We are cer- 
tainly entered on a new cycle in the affairs of men ; for 
a nation might, in times past, have become great by 
means which now are altogether inadequate. The city 
which Cain built, though it bore the stamp of the first 
murderer, became, before the deluge, a mighty city, 
and the heart of a great Empire. But no kingdom in 
the antediluvian world was truly great. What consti- 
tutes a State? Let the poet and legislator first answer. 

"Not high-raised battlement or laboured mound, 

Thick wall or moated gate ; 
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned ; 

Not bays and broad-armed ports, 
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ; 

Not starred and spangled courts 
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. 

No: men, high-minded men. 

Men, who their duties know 
But know their rights, and knowing dare maintain. 

These constitute a State, 
And Sovereign Law that State's collected will." 

Men constitute a State, and the character of the State 
depends upon the character of the men. One of the 

289 



^po NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

iDOsr iinpamal foneigii judges of our ottq country is re- 
pojxed to have grren. as the result of his stndr and ob- 
-jg^^j_^ -_ :"-:: :"--; Ameiicaii instittnions are good, hut 
the pe. ^ . . ^ i en?^gh to support ihean. We pray 
God that this may e to be true. But lei us run 

orer some of th -: " . . - " -: ressary to National Great- 
ness. EDQ see V. , ^ . . ::. we possess, and of what 
we are aesiitir:^ 

I. In tbc d-'r. . . : A G-:>ro pasxxtagi: is requisite. 

Hereditary guaiities niay be traced in natians as in 

: ■ ~ : '"~rr years* history of the Hebrews 

.:jes a :e?>?:2 ?f inrportance. It 

was necessarv that thai ct - all die, that 



evuuci ; and even '^ -:'. - .'. :. : " ■ .. ' i slaTenr 



age m dweih: . . - r of (jod m rocking the 

.-. -:±y. I: 5. zim is ever *:■ De one of God's great 

1:. - ; :'t preparation must be 

~ . _ . : his character. It is 

::>?■ late r:' seek to ZDTm ne- : : r the occasion when 

-":-:.:.:"•_ iTc already n? more 

.A n^an's discipline 
-'::;-_. : - "i whh the other ca-jLses, 

_ '- ■/'T -.vrTld's changes, 
. - -. . No man can go 

to sleep a - "ie morning of 

a ' 

C . 

s: jness oi : : . -.'--. - -^ .. 



GEORGE E. CHEEVER 291 

revolution. And Luther's character, by as much greater 
than Napoleon's as his cause was nobler and holier, was 
cut as with the point of a diamond, and wrought into 
its unchanging, steadfast, reliable qualities, in lonely 
spiritual discipline, in the cloisters at Erfurth. What is 
true of men is true of nations. The '"yoke" must be 
"borne in the youth," if we would have qualities that 
shall awe the world in manhood. 

The discipline of our ancestors in laying the founda- 
tions of many generations in this country, was what 
we might suppose it would be, if God intended that in 
the coming era of glorv' in the world we should be 
found among the number of his favoured nations, 
when, in a national sense, God shall "make up his jew- 
els." If ever a free people wrought out an inheritance 
of liberty through trials, it was our Pilgrim ancestors. 
They went out from one fire into another fire that 
seemed ready to devour them, ^^'hat the wolves of 
despotism and church t}-ranny had left imdone in one 
hemisphere, the wolves and savages of the woods in 
another seemed ready to finish. By trials they were 
prepared for trials. They were the best part of the 
population of Europe; but it was necessary that in 
Europe itself they should put oft their European taint, 
and receive those germinating principles, which would 
be transplanted with them, to rise in a fresh soil above 
that great grow-th of underweeds, which othens'ise in 
Europe would have overpowered them. 

They were a race that grew out of the noblest prin- 
ciples of the Reformation. Until the Reformation had 
begun to purify the world, there was no such race in 
existence; God and man might have looked about in 
vain for the materials of a virtuous colonization of this 
countn.-. We cannot help remarking how wonderful 
was that Divine Providence, which turned aside the 



292 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ships of G-)lunibiis fn^ni the Northern Coasts of this 
great Continent; which kept the f(jrests and the rocks 
of New England hidden from tlie world at a time when 
nothing bnt the auri sacra fames, the accursed thirst 
of gold, occupied men's souls; at a time when there was 
neither religion nor patriotism to colonize a new country, 
hut avarice, ])igotry, and desi)otism to oppress it : hidden 
until a race of men should be ready for His ])ur])Oses. 
"Had New I^igland been colonized immediately on the 
discovery of the American Continent," says the accom- 
plished native historian of our own country,^ "the 
(jld English institutions w(juld have been planted under 
the powerful inlluence of the Ivoman Cath(jlic religion; 
had the settlement been made under Elizabeth, it would 
have been before the activity of the popular mind in 
religion had conducted to a corresjKjnding activity of 
mind in politics. The l*ilgrims were English Protes- 
tants; they were exiles for religion; they were men dis- 
ciplined by misfortune, cultivated by opportunity of 
external observation, equal in rank as in rights, and 
bound l)y no code but that of religion or the public 
will." J should add to this, that the public will would 
no more have bound our Puritan ancestors than private 
despotism, had they felt it to be op])osed to the dictates 
of religion. And I must reiterate, what we ought never 
to forget, when the character of the Puritans is in ques- 
tion, that rem.arkahle eulogium bestowed upon them by 
Hume, — that amidst the absolute authority of the 
Crown, "the precious spark of liberty had been kindled, 
and was preserved jjy tjje Puritans alone; and it is 
to this sect that the English owe the whole free- 
dom OF their constitution." I wonder at this his- 
torian, and with my whole heart T th.ank him, that with 
all his partialities and prejudices, he should have penned 
' Mr. Bancroft. 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 293 

concerning the Puritans a paragraph of such high, bold, 
undaunted truth. 

As natives of New England, we are proud of the 
claims of a Puritan and a Protestant ancestry. These 
two appellatives have comprehended about as much vir- 
tue, nobleness, freedom, and piety, as the world is ever 
likely to witness in combination. And as to the sterner 
virtues of our Puritan ancestors, which it has become 
fashionable in some quarters to depreciate, — I do not 
wonder that a sensual world and a self-indulgent spirit 
carp at them. "Indeed," said the great Edmund Burke, 
on a great occasion, "the whole class of the severe and 
restrictive virtues are at a market almost too high for 
humanity." Nevertheless, it is by the spirit of those 
virtues alone, that our institutions can be preserved, or 
that we, as a people, can be made, what we hope we 
yet may be, the salt of freedom and religion to the 
world. Our Puritan ancestors were disciplined by self- 
denial ; this comprehends the whole foundation of their 
character; for self-denial is, and to fallen beings ever 
must be, the ground of all virtue. The inheritance 
which, in the exercise of "the severe and restrictive vir- 
tues," they procured for us by suffering, can be pre- 
served by us, or imparted to the world, only through a 
participation in the same discipline. Luxury on our 
part, and sarcasms on our fathers' virtues, will never 
do it. 

2. One of the qualities which distinguished our Puri- 
tan ancestors was a high regard for the Word of 
God and high views of its inspiration. This is one of 
the qualities by which, as the world approaches its state 
of glory, nations must be distinguished as well as men. 
This quality must be a national element, above all sec- 
tarianism, entering into all developments of national 



294 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

life, in whatever organizations, but especially in Com- 
mon Schools. Our common schools are to the nation 
what the lungs are to the body; and any foul or bitter 
elements that enter into them will be followed by disease 
and paleness in our national existence. A pure atmo- 
sphere of divine truth is as necessary to the health and 
life of these national vitalities, as a due quantity of 
oxygen to the physical play of the lungs. Suffer your 
schools to be turned from their noble purposes for party 
ends, or to be defrauded of the Word of God, and you 
put the seeds of consumption in the vital organs of your 
country; sooner or later the fruits will make their ap- 
pearance; — the hectic fever, the wild pulse, the break- 
ing up of the system, must follow. 

3. In addition to this, I may next remark, that the 
grand principle of Protestantism, which is private 
JUDGMENT OF THE ScRiPTURES, must characterize a 
nation, as well as high views of their divine authority. 
This is one of the elements of freedom of thought. 
Bind a man in his religion, and you have bound him 
essentially, and may do with him what you please. The 
Romanists know this. Chain a man's religious opinions 
to any court, church, council, or canonized father, to 
any thing but the Bible, and your fetters are upon his 
liberty, your iron has entered into his soul. 

From spiritual despotism to civil and political the 
path is short, easy, inevitable. Hence, we cannot but 
view with the most jealous distrust the progress of that 
anti-Protestant tendency which has been stealing upon 
us from a monarchy and a Church-Establishment. We 
should look upon this matter in the spirit of no sect, 
but in the light of an interest dear to us all as the com- 
mon light of day, whether we be Christians or infidels. 
This interest is that of every man of this Republic, 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 295 

who is not ready to give up the grand principle of re- 
publicanism, the right of private judgment and action 
in regard to the men, principles, and measures of the 
administration of his country's government. Dearly 
as I might love my church, were I indissolubly bound 
to any form of church government, I would rather it 
were in the bottom of the salt sea sunk, than made a 
machinery of manacles and fetters for the souls of men. 
I am sure that this growing scorn of the Reformation, 
and this depreciation of the grand principle of private 
judgment in matters of religion, springs not from a 
new form of piety, but from the ever vital spirit of des- 
potism in the old world. And if anywhere I could trace 
the proofs of that foreign conspiracy, which has been 
asserted, against the liberties of this country, and 
against all mankind through our subjection, I could 
find it here. 

Private judgment in matters of faith, private judg- 
ment in matters of liberty, — these are two kindred 
rights and possessions. The destruction of them both 
constitutes a perfect despotism. Take away either, and 
you endanger the other; but the bridge is more easily 
thrown up from the destruction of the first to that of 
the second, and then your spiritual despotism may 
march her troops across into your civil territory almost 
without notice, because it takes us on our noble side. 
We are not apt to suspect our religion of endangering 
our liberties ; and hence this union of spiritual and civil 
despotism may be going on, may have been consum- 
mated, and a people yet be scarcely aware that it is done, 
or hozv it is done. This noble Protestant principle 
therefore is to be sacredly preserved and guarded as an 
element of national greatness. No where in the world 
is there a more complete subjection of the national 
mind, a thicker covering of the fire of liberty with 



296 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

frosty ashes, than where this principle is disregarded 
or repudiated. 

I have seen this. TravelHng across the Tyrol Alps, 
where the forms of Hofer and his noble band might 
seem to be at every step around the traveller, where the 
spirit of freedom seems a quality in the bracing air, and 
the very mountains are uttering to the storms the chant 
of man's liberty and immortality, even there, as I enter 
the city of Innspruck, cradled as it is in among moun- 
tains, that with every glance upward flash defiance to 
the tyrant, I see the open mouths of brazen cannon 
planted across the public square, and I, a citizen of the 
United States, am defended at the point of the bayonet 
from stepping beyond the line of their enclosure, even 
in a time of profound peace ! Why was this ? I know 
of but one solution, one meaning in the vigilance of 
tyranny. That public square, lynx-eyed despotism had 
fixed upon as the place, in the heart of that city, whither 
its patriots would rush to the rescue, if at any time the 
spirit of liberty should grow too strong for its re- 
straints. It was in an Austrian region that I had to 
conceal my Italian Bibles, which I wished to carry as 
a present from a friend to a friend in Italy, lest I might 
get into difficulty from being found with such an in- 
strument of religious and civil freedom upon my per- 
son. All tyrants know, with the instinct of despotism, 
that if Faith instead of superstition gets possession of 
the people, there is an end to their power of bondage. 
The principle of private judgment would overturn the 
gorgeous structure of civil and religious tyranny from 
its foundation. Men have bound the world in a civil 
and religious frost like iron ; — well may they be afraid 
of Faith ; it is a spring thaw, that loosens the avalanche. 

The State alone has impressed despotism enough 
upon men, but the State alone has usually left the reli- 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 297 

gious being of mankind free. The State in union with 
the Church developes another form of despotism, and 
carries tyranny into the spiritual world, and thence back 
again with additional strength into the political world. 
The union of Church and State not only supplies reli- 
gious fanaticism with political power, but it arms politi- 
cal tyranny with the sanctions of the unseen world. 

A sect united with the State is sure to persecute : the 
pozver of persecution must be taken away, and kept 
away forever. It is not that the Romanist, the Con- 
gregationalist, the Socinian, or the Prelatist, has not 
the perfect right to choose his own religion, and to wor- 
ship in it with a freedom like the air that he breathes; 
but it is that he has not the right to enforce his religion 
upon me, or to make the unhallowed and arrogant as- 
sumption, that his Church alone is the Church of Christ 
on earth, and that all others are to be consigned over 
to God's "uncovenanted mercies," especially when this 
enforcement is grounded on the possession of certain 
arbitrary forms, instead of the truth as it is in Jesus. 
Do you wish to see the tendency of such assumptions? 
I will read to you a passage from a British Review of 
high authority, a passage worthy of the palmiest state 
of Popery in the noon of the world's night : "All the 
members of a State ought to belong to one established 
Church ; and wherever the contrary is the case, it proves 
a source of weakness to that State, which then ceases 
to live by its internal vitality, and must seek its support 
from without. Where, however, the number of Dis- 
senters is small, and the State powerful, the danger is 
less imminent. Strictly speaking, religious sects can 
only be tolerated in a State, and the rank they hold in 
it can be only one degree higher than that held by 
Jews" ! These are detestable sentiments ; I only say, 
God forbid they should ever get root in this country, 



298 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

which they would do, should the spirit of Romanism 
prevail. The very word toleration is a disgrace to the 
English language ; it is a reproach to the tongue of any 
free people to utter it in reference to religion, for it 
comprehends the whole essence of despotism. Religious 
toleration ! Nor is the word dissent in our country, a 
whit better, justly exposing any sect that shall under- 
take to fling it out to others, to the ridicule and re- 
proach of Christendom. 

4. Intimately connected with this principle of pri- 
vate judgment of the Scriptures, and freedom in reli- 
gious opinion, is another truth, which, in its combina- 
tion with the being of nations, passes into a quality and 
a characteristic ; and must henceforth be an indispensa- 
ble element of national greatness, the great truth of 
Justification by Faith. Here, again, I speak the 
language of no sect, but of that universal wisdom which 
is above all sects, and by which all sects, that do not 
mean to die, must live. And I fearlessly affirm that 
this principle is as essential to the true greatness of a 
nation, as it is to the salvation of an individual soul. I 
affirm that it is, if only on the ground that this prin- 
ciple is at once the principle of true spiritual freedom, 
and the source of a pure morality ; a morality that takes 
a man's being, and a country's being out of self into 
disinterestedness; a morality not of mint, anise, and 
cummin, but of noble deeds springing from noble 
hearts ; the spontaneous offering of forgiven children to 
a forgiving parent; not to buy forgiveness, but as its 
fruit; not to be forgiven, but because forgiven. As to 
the essence of freedom, Mr. Burke once said, with sin- 
gular energy as well as truth, "he that fears God, fears 
nothing else;" but the fear of God, which takes away 
every other fear, comes only out of Faith; and perfect 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 299 

freedom is possible on no other conditions but those 
which make God our Father and us His children. We 
cannot believe that that principle, which binds together 
the whole family in earth and heaven, which shall be 
the constituting element of principalities and powers 
that are to endure when creation shall have passed 
away, can be of no importance in our national existence 
upon earth. In truth, we are but as the grub, the low 
chrysalis, in our present state, in comparison with that 
transfiguration, which is to take place through the per- 
vading power of this principle in our social, political, 
and literary existence. This is that cup of immortality, 
which, whatsoever nation drinks it, shall pass into a 
permanence of glory, no more to be eclipsed, shadowed, 
or dissolved, till the final conflagration. 

This principle was Luther's Articulus stantis vel ca- 
dentis Ecclesico. It is just as much so in politics and 
literature as in religion. We have had on this earth a 
long trial without it, without the preserving elements 
of a national existence. This world has been the theatre 
of a mighty experiment; whether nations could be 
prosperous and permanent in pride and sin. The re- 
sult has been overwhelming. Empire after empire has 
fallen to the ground. I have passed over the ruins of 
dead and buried kingdoms, have seen the shades of de- 
parted monarchies, and conversed with them, haunting 
the spots of their former glory; and the hollow voice, 
as if the wind were moaning from earth's central sepul- 
chres, has spoken in the words of Scripture, deep unto 
deep, in my hearing, the nation and kingdom that 

WILL not serve thee SHALL PERISH ; YEA, THOSE 
NATIONS SHALL BE UTTERLY WASTED. It is a SOlcmn 

thing to stand in the Colosseum at Rome, beneath the 
shadow of the Parthenon at Athens, within the crum- 
bling shrine of the temple of Karnak in Egypt, and to 



300 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

listen to the echo of those awful words. These his- 
torical materials and monuments, are so many intelli- 
gent chords, which men's iniquities have wrought for 
that great Harp of the Past, across which God's Spirit 
sweeps with its majestic, awful utterance! God grant 
that the history of our nation may not add another tone 
of wailing to the melancholy voices of dead empires. 

The principle of Faith is yet to make a new Litera- 
ture for nations and the world. The materials are 
among us, but the eye of genius has been heavy with 
slumber. The film and frost of custom conceal a thou- 
sand open truths. Almost the whole secret of discovery 
in science is the perception and questioning of what is 
customary in a new light. There are now floating in 
our atmosphere of knowledge many common facts and 
observations, with connexions hidden by the veil of cus- 
tom, and concealed like the future itself, but which are 
only waiting for a single question from some awakened 
mind, in some blessed mood of genius, in which this 
frosty veil is lifted, a single question like that addressed 
by Newton to the fall of an apple, which may well nigh 
open another universe of wonders. Now I apply this 
to the literature which is yet to be created out of the 
materials of Divine Truth and the workings of our 
spiritual being. And I am reminded of Mr. Coleridge's 
beautiful definition of genius : "To carry the feelings of 
childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the 
child's sense of wonder and novelty with appearances, 
which every day for, perhaps, forty years has rendered 
familiar, — 

'With sun and moon and stars throughout the year. 
And man and woman, — ' 

this is the character and privilege of genius, and one 
of the marks, which distinguish genius from talents." 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 301 

If we apply this to religious things, we cannot but see 
that a state of mind is requisite in every man analogous 
to the experience of genius with common truth in its 
freshness, in regard to the perception of divine truth; 
and that this spiritual sense of the power and beauty of 
divine truth is essential to the perfection of a nation's 
literature. There is therefore a cause of illimitable 
power in the awakening and discipline of the mind of 
nations, as yet very little developed, but which is becom- 
ing every day more powerful. It is individual regener- 
ation by the Spirit of God, which is to the perception, 
relish, and influence of divine truth what genius is to 
the wonderful influence of nature. This is yet to do 
more in disciplining the mind of nations, and in creat- 
ing and energizing the world's literature, than all other 
causes. The operation of this cause is absolutely essen- 
tial to the perfection of literature. All the forms of lit- 
erature hitherto known have been deformed and life- 
less, in comparison with the beauty and glory of those 
it shall assume beneath the baptism of the Spirit of 
God, when its material becomes divine truth, or earthly 
truth transfigured with celestial glory. 

It is not to be supposed for a moment that the pres- 
ence or the absence of a religious atmosphere of thought 
and feeling would not create an entire difference in the 
productions of human genius. You might as well sup- 
pose that the vegetation at the bottom of the sea can be 
no way different from that, which, beneath the bright 
sun, or the dewy stars, invests the earth's surface with 
its fragrant, flowering verdure. As great a difference 
will there be between the literature of a world embalmed 
with the Spirit of Him who died to redeem it, and that 
which is the growth of ages that have gloomily rolled 
on in the rejection of that Spirit, as between the sweet 
bloom of creation in the open light of heaven, and the 



302 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

rough, dark recesses of submarine forests of sponges 
and corals. Such as is indicated in this last image has 
much of the world's literature proved hitherto; and in 
it sea-monsters have whelped and stabled. 

Now are we to behold a literature so full of all quali- 
ties of loveliness and purity, such new regions of high 
thought and feeling before unimagined opened up in it 
to the mind, that to the dwellers in past days it should 
have seemed rather the production of angels than of 
men. Nor is this an imaginary view. The world and 
its literature, in its life without the Spirit of God, might 
powerfully remind the thoughtful observer of Plato's 
cave, and of the thoughts of its darkened inhabitants; 
and when, from a higher elevation, the spirit gets a 
glimpse of reality, then, looking over the works and 
businesses of this great ant-hill of humanity, our globe, 
we seem to see bands of chained men, even as Plato de- 
scribes them, counting the shadows of subterranean 
fires, and making idols of popularity, out of the subtle 
intellects that most clearly distinguish and describe 
those shadows. These things must have an end; and 
when men learn, beautifully and truly remarks one of 
our great native poets,^ the outward by the inward to 
discern, the inward by the Spirit, they shall win 

"Their way deep down into the soul. The light 
Shed in by God shall open to the sight 
Vast powers of being; regions long untrod 
Shall stretch before them filled with life and God." 

All things shall breathe an air from upper climes. Then 
men listening, with the inward ear, — 

"The ocean of eternity shall hear 
Along its coming waves ; and thou shalt see 
Its spiritual waters as they roll through thee." 
^ Mr. Dana. 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 303 

5. The next possession and element of National Great- 
ness, which I must notice, is the Christian Sab- 
bath. We possess this blessing through the goodness 
of God, in a greater purity perhaps than any other peo- 
ple. The permanence of our institutions, the perpetuity 
of our freedom, depends greatly upon the carefulness 
with which we guard and preserve it. Here I am com- 
pelled to say, that there is a great insensibility to the 
preciousness and the preserving power of this blessing. 
A thousand times better the austere strictness, with 
which our Puritan ancestors observed the holiness of 
this institution, than the looseness which too often char- 
acterizes their descendants in regard to it. In general, 
a nation's prosperity has been and is proportioned to 
the sacredness with which it keeps the Sabbath. The 
reasons are as simple and plain as the daylight. Wher- 
ever the Sabbath is kept, it makes holy and well edu- 
cated families. It infuses into the poor and ignorant 
a sense of the blessings of cleanliness, knowledge, and 
virtue, and an ambition to possess them. It links the 
weeks of households, villages, cities, communities, with 
a golden chain of order and of love running through 
them. It is the education of a nation, where, one-sev- 
enth portion of our time, we are all at school together. 
It promotes industry, and yet checks it from over-task- 
ing the tired frame of the labourer or the working mind 
of the student, by the obligation of a heavenly leisure 
intervening. By recalling the busiest worshippers of 
Mammon from the vortex, and the din, and the strife 
of our external world of selfishness and avarice, to the 
quiet fireside, as well as the solemnity of the Sanctuary, 
it increases our sense of the blessedness of home, makes 
homely blessings more precious, quickens the pulses of 
affectionate hearts in the ties of the family constitution, 
and prevents the utter weaning of the heart from home, 



304 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

in men who would otherwise live in the world and be 
of the world entirely.^ 

But this is not all : — our Sabbath is a day of sacred 
rest, but not of indolence ; it is a day of intellectual and 
spiritual awakening; a day in which a great, onward, 
lofty impulse is given simultaneously to the minds of 
a whole people, in the bringing of themes before them, 
which are a study for the intellect of angels. So that 
the Sabbath, as God has instituted it, does more to en- 
large and invigorate a nation's mind, than all other 
causes. It is like a periodic inundation of the Nile, 
after which the week itself is sown and harvested with 
virtues and blessings. This, most certainly, is the 
grand reason for the intellectual superiority of Protes- 
tant over Catholic countries, where the Sabbath is 
merely a waste and dissipation of the national mind, 
and concurs, with other causes, with the multiplicity of 

^ The notice given by Wil- cool, so self-possessed. It is 

berforce, of the suicide of Lord very curious to hear the news- 

Castlereagh,as proceeding from papers speaking of incessant 

the overtasking of his facul- application to business, forget- 

ties on the babbath as on the ting that by the weekly admis- 

week day, is strikingly in point: sion of a day of rest, which 

"He was certainly deranged our Maker has graciously en- 

— the eti'ect probably of contni- joined, our faculties would be 

ued wear and tear of mind. preserved from the etfects of 

But the strong impression of this constant strain. i am 

my mind is, that it is the effect strongly impressed by the rec- 

of the non-observance of the oUection of your endeavour to 

Sunday, both as abstracting prevail on the lawyers to give 

from politics, from the con- up Sunday consultations, in 

stant recurrence of the same which poor Romilly would not 

reflections, and as correcting concur, if he had suffered his 

the false views of worldly mind to enjoy such occasional 

things, and bringing them down remissions, it is highly prob- 

to their true diminutiveness. able the strings would never 

Poor Castlereagh I I never have snapped as they did, from 

was so shocked by any incident. over-tension. Alas ! alas ! poor 

He really was the last man in fellow! i did not think I 

the world who appeared likely should feel for him so very 

to be carried away into the deeply."— Life of Wilberforce, 

commission of such an act ! So Vol. 5, page 134. 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 30S 

other Feast Days, to sap the energies and morals of the 
people. In proportion as we neglect the Sabbath, we 
open the door to the same evils which every where meet 
the traveller in Romish countries. 

This institution then is the constituted safeguard, in 
Divine Providence, of all our blessings. No nation can 
carelessly permit the habits of neglect and profanation 
of its sacredness to creep upon her cities, and not be 
deeply injured. Those Sabbath nuisances, that from 
time to time spring up through the profligacy of indi- 
viduals, ought to be destroyed as soon as attempted. 
I have witnessed much profaning of the Sabbath, and 
in many forms; in countries where such profanation 
was esteemed a virtue, and where, though allowed, it 
was esteemed a sin; but, all things considered, I have 
never seen a more disgraceful form of such profanation, 
than here in this city, under the very eye of the authori- 
ties, prevails in the daily Sabbath sale of polluted and 
polluting public journals. 

6. Connected with the Christian Sabbath, another 
element not merely of national greatness, but, consider- 
ing the peculiar nature of our institutions, of national 
existence, is that of a Christian Education. Edu- 
cation alone will not save us. Much has been said, and 
justly, on the necessity of general intelligence as the 
ground-work of republican institutions; and alarming 
facts are arrayed as to the increasing ignorance of the 
people of the United States. But intelligence alone is 
not the qualification which the peculiar nature of our 
institutions renders necessary. Goodness, moral good- 
ness, is requisite, integrity of character, sincere patriot- 
ism. That this is that part of a Christian education, 
which is needed more than knowledge, I hesitate not to 
affirm. Without it, the universal diffusion of know- 



3o6 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ledge will but prepare this country to become a mere 
gladiatorial arena of contending parties, where pride, 
selfishness, passion in every shape, may have room to 
battle for the victory. Now, it is not Common Schools 
alone that can make a Christian education; if they be 
separated from the Gospel, or the Gospel separated from 
them, it is plain that they do but train the evil in men's 
hearts for a more skilful, desperate, unprincipled con- 
flict for victory, and what are called the spoils of 
victory. 

There are two things needed in the common educa- 
tion of this country more than in that of any other 
country on earth; a religious morality, and that great 
and noble quality, which, in spite of the priceless excel- 
lence of our institutions, and their claims upon our 
affections, we are in danger of losing, a lofty pa- 
triotism. The education demanded is one of self-dis- 
cipline, self-government, and the merging of private 
ends in the common welfare. It is already proved that 
in no country in the world are there so many tempta- 
tions to private selfishness as in this; temptations to 
convert our country's sacred service into a mean and 
miserable scramble for office. In other countries the 
frowning buttresses of despotism will stand, though pri- 
vate selfishness prevails and rages ; but our institutions 
are so open and etherial, and yet so complicated, and so 
delicate in their adjustment, they suppose so much ster- 
ling principle, such forgetfulness of self, such regard to 
truth and righteousness, that without these qualities 
they are nothing; they cannot last, they are not fit for 
the government of a people destitute of self-discipline. 
Our government is indeed the government not so much 
of the people, as of themselves by the people; and it 
would be a new thing indeed in the world, if a mass of 
men, by the mere circumstance of being massed to- 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 307 

gether, should develope qualities, which they do not 
possess personally and singly. Our government is an 
attempt to disprove the bitter sarcasm of tyrants, that 
mankind cannot govern themselves; and in truth man- 
kind have generally been so destitute of moral principle, 
that they have had to appoint perpetual dictators against 
the violence of their own passions. Be assured that if 
men had been fit to govern themselves, they would have 
done it; despots would have been monsters unknown. 
Most fearlessly do I assert that men do not know how 
to govern themselves except by the guidance of God's 
Spirit. This fits men for self-government, but we know 
of nothing else that will. A common school education 
which consists in mere intelligence, will never produce 
this fitness. I repeat it, a Christian Education is 
supposed, as absolutely necessary, as the ground of per- 
manence and success in our institutions. Let a single 
generation grow up without it, and though ever so satu- 
rated with knowledge, we are lost. If our common 
schools and other educational interests be penetrated 
with the influences of the Gospel, we are saved. The 
Sabbath and the Pulpit constitute a most essential part 
of the education, as well as the manly discipline, of this 
country. The Pulpit, the Sabbath, and the Common 
School, will all have to unite in the incessant applica- 
tion of holy influences, as well as the communication of 
knowledge, if our country's institutions are to be pre- 
served. 

7. Here then we have developed another element of 
national greatness, which hitherto the world has utterly 
neglected, but without which, though nations may be 
great in despotism and misery, and the grandeur which 
attends them, they cannot be great in liberty and hap- 
piness. This element is the presence of the regener- 



3o8 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ATiNG Spirit of God. Without this, we cannot exist 
in our present form of government, though we may 
exist, spHt into despotisms, contending and warring, 
enacting over again the same scenes that have filled the 
history of Europe for ages. The lovers of liberty and 
the friends of their race in Europe have been looking to 
us with bright and steadfast hope ; but they cannot look 
to us, if they do not look to God. We have indeed a 
glorious framework, if the Spirit of God imbue it; but 
how little do they think of that. They have been look- 
ing to our institutions, as we have ourselves, for salva- 
tion ; but already their courage begins to fail, not from 
any thing disastrous in the institutions, but from what 
they see in the people. Now our institutions can no 
more make a free and noble people, than a church lit- 
urgy can make a holy church. It is the people that 
must breathe the life of freedom into their institutions, 
as it is the heart that must breathe its piety into prayer, 
or no form can create it, though it were moulded by 
the hand of God. It may be that God means to dem- 
onstrate to the world, by permitting our passions, our 
selfishness, our atheism, to make the dreadful experi- 
ment, how perfectly inefficacious without the Divine 
Spirit, are the very best institutions, which the culti- 
vated wisdom and piety of ages could discover or frame, 
to restrain men's wickedness or to make them free and 
happy. God grant the world may be spared so fearful 
a demonstration; six thousand years have been filled 
with such developments ; and yet this may be necessary 
as a last one, and a most significant and solemn lesson 
it would read. We grasp at shadows, we weary our- 
selves in vain, we lean upon a broken reed, which will 
pierce us, if we look any where below God. I have been 
told that recently the great French statesman and phi- 
losopher, M. Guizot, has written to a friend in this 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 309 

country, imploring him, if possible, to give the anxious 
friends of liberty in the old world some hope. But 
Guizot does not dream of God's Spirit; and his friend 
should tell him, what multitudes in this country have 
yet to learn, that without the baptism of that Spirit, 
though instead of the dark clouds that seem to his vision 
to be gathering, all indications were as bright as the 
sun, and placid and pure as a day in midsummer, if the 
whole hope of the world centred in our institutions, it 
would fail. Chains, says Cowper, 

"Chains are the portion of revolted man, 
Stripes and a dungeon: — " 

and he finds them all three, the Christian poet adds, in 
his own body, in his own being, until he turns to God. 
This is the truth inculcated in Burke's powerful lan- 
guage, — It is written in the eternal constitu- 
tion OF things, that men of intemperate minds 

CANNOT BE FREE. TheIR PASSIONS FORGE THEIR 
FETTERS. 

There is then no hope for us, but in the outpouring 
of the Spirit of God; for this it is the duty of every 
Christian patriot to plead, to be "night and day praying 
exceedingly." 

To corroborate this view let us now glance for a 
moment at some of the dangers which threaten us, some 
of the influences, which are working, both secretly and 
openly, to blast our hopes. Wherever God has been 
sowing good seed in the world, the enemy has been sow- 
ing tares. Into the seed-corn, which God took out of 
Egypt, the Enemy threw his handful; it was enough; 
and after forty years winnowing in the wilderness, still 
it was there. It grew betimes into a strong overpow- 



3IO NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ering crop, so that while the corn was dwarfed and 
sickly, the tares, as in their native soil, rose up a dark, 
dense forest. This time it was Idolatry. It was an 
infusion from the habits of demon worship on the Nile. 
Three thousand years after this, the seed which God 
took out of Judea was the best in the world. But the 
Enemy was there. With stealthy, noiseless tread he 
passed among the churches, dropping his germs of evil, 
and with luxuriant growth they filled all nations, their 
overshadowing foliage shutting out the light, and bale- 
ful dews and fruits dropping from the branches. This 
time it was Popery. It was an infusion of germs from 
the efifete traditions of Judaism. Once more — the seed 
which God collected to sow in this Continent was the 
best in the world. For some of it He winnowed three 
kingdoms ; and yet, the Enemy was there. This time it 
was not Idolatry, it was not Popery, it was Slavery. 
He dropped his seed quietly into the earth, and went his 
way. Two hundred annual suns have ripened it. It 
is a question yet to be decided : Will it destroy our in- 
stitutions? Manifold are the dangers which arise out 
of it, fearful are the evils which it brings in its train. 
There is a rule, according to which every govern- 
ment should be framed, and all national policy deter- 
mined, as strictly as individual conduct. Our govern- 
ment, more than any other in the world, professes to 
regard it. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do 
to you, do ye even so to them." We are but beginning 
to feel the evils, which the violation of this rule must 
work among us, if it be persisted in. Indeed, there is 
no infraction of this rule, but, sooner or later, will work 
its revenge. There is no injury to the feelings, but 
makes its mark upon the universe. The universe is as 
a sort of electric telegraph, to take up the moans of the 
helpless, and to write them in letters indestructible even 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 311 

by the final conflagration. Nor is there a plaint ever 
falls from injured humanity, but it falls into the ear of 
God, and waits its appointed time of judgment. Thou, 
O man, that walkest amidst the ruins of thine own pro- 
ducing, that seest but thine own will before thee, and 
waterest thy backward path with the tears of those that 
come lamenting after, thou shalt walk again amidst 
these scenes of thine own carelessness and self-indul- 
gence; thou shalt, led by the Erynnys of thine own 
mind, the serpent-haired slave-driver of oppressors, re- 
trace the desolate spots of trampled rights and injured 
feelings, where every step shall be as over a burning 
marie, but ten thousand times more agonizing, than if 
thou wert treading amidst the penal fires of fallen 
angels. 

This is a sad subject, and )^et there is hope, even in 
the evils we may suffer. There is a discipline of na- 
tions as of individuals ; and with nations, as with indi- 
viduals, there is a precious jewel in adversity. It is a 
mistake to suppose that uninterrupted national pros- 
perity is the path to national greatness. Here as well 
as there, nationally as well as individually, the beautiful 
language of Cowper may be applied : 

"The path of sorrow, and that path alone, 
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown." 

Men must be tried, nations must be tried; and the 
evil that will not be persuaded out of them must be 
burned out of them. Especially must this be the case, 
if God is going to use them remarkably for his pur- 
poses. The temper of the weapon must be proved, the 
latent flaws must be developed and worked off, the evil 
tendencies, that in a new and untried scene of being 
would break out and disappoint a noble design of its 



312 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

execution, must be revealed and extirpated. When the 
design is on the eve of its accompHshment, there must 
be no springing of the materials, no breaking of the 
instruments, no turning of their edges. 

Now it may be that God will work this evil of sla- 
very out of us, by the great evils which it causes us to 
suffer. With nations as with individuals, God may 
use their own sins as the means of chastising and cor- 
recting them, even while he spares them, and means still 
to use them for his own glory. Here is our hope ; and 
I confess that in some aspects of the subject, it seems 
to be our only hope. 

Permit me once more on this point to refer you to a 
man, whose pages I can never open without admira- 
tion, whose wisdom I can never contemplate without 
reverence; a man who, though born and educated the 
most chivalrous and loyal of monarchists, promulgated 
sentiments that our Republic would do well to build 
upon; — the illustrious Edmund Burke. "There is a 
time," he says, "when men will not suffer bad things 
because their ancestors suffered worse. There is a time, 
when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will neither 
draw reverence, nor obtain protection, I do most seri- 
ously put it to administration, to consider the wisdom 
of a timely reform. Early reformations are amicable 
arrangements with a friend in power ; late reformations 
are terms imposed upon a conquered enemy : early ref- 
ormations are made in cool blood ; late reformations are 
made under a state of inflammation. In that state of 
things the people behold in government nothing that is 
respectable. They see the abuse, and they will see 
nothing else. They fall into the temper of a furious 
populace, provoked at the disorder of a house of ill- 
fame; they never attempt to correct or regulate; they 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 313 

go to work by the shortest way. They abate the nui- 
sance, they pull down the house." 

A second danger which I shall mention arises from 
the base and unprincipled means and instruments em- 
ployed in this country by the demon of Party Spirit. 
Men will soon become debauched and unprincipled 
themselves, who will resort to unprincipled helpers. 
The materials of this evil come to us from abroad. The 
North and the South ought to have united in protect- 
ing this country from the shoals of ignorant and vicious 
emigration that pour in upon us from the old world. 
The admission of them as native elements is like open- 
ing a vein and injecting a virulent poison in the sys- 
tem. The most iron constitution would sink beneath 
such a process. But to think of these dregs from the 
putrid sinks of Europe being bought at a price, being 
ravenously snatched at by the Spirit of Party! It is 
a most enormous, most insufferable wrong. 

I am not willing to be misunderstood, nor am I afraid 
of it by any candid mind. I do not forget, no patriot 
ever can, how much we owe to the disinterested friend- 
ship of intelligent and virtuous foreigners. We have 
had a Lafayette to fight side by side with Washing- 
ton the battles of our native land, in the hour of our 
peril ; and when he came to his adopted country, to see 
its prosperity, in his old age, we received him with the 
joy and filial reverence of children towards a long ab- 
sent parent. No! we love to enumerate all that we 
owe to the patriotism of foreigners ; but we love to re- 
member that they have been patriots, not hirelings. 
We love the virtuous and intelligent families of for- 
eigners, domesticated and naturalized among us. Some 
of them are among our own most true and valued per- 



314 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

sonal friends. We love to consider our Country as the 
asylum of liberty for the oppressed in all the world; 
but not an asylum for the wicked, the abandoned, the 
profligate, the "unwhipt of justice," for those who, in 
their own country, would only fill the poor-houses and 
the jails. It is a very different thing to make this 
country an asylum for the oppressed, and to make it 
the Botany Bay of all Europe. How often have we 
heard the sarcasms of foreigners on the riots that have 
broken out among us ! How often, nay, how con- 
stantly have the materials of such riots, the materials 
of our disgrace in the eyes of Europe, been found in 
the sediment of that torrent of emigration, which they 
themselves have poured over us ! 

It seems a melancholy thing that we could not, for a 
season, have been shut out from all communication 
with the old world, and left to grow up and knit into 
manhood with our native materials. It is a most unde- 
niable fact, that in many respects persons are not fitted 
to take part in our government even as voters, who 
have not been, for some good period at least, educated 
among us. There is needed some little practical know- 
ledge of our institutions, some sort of acquaintance 
with their workings, some insight into the relative ac- 
tion of parties, and some knowledge of the many and 
complicated currents of influences among us, over 
which a patriotic and intelligent voter must keep watch, 
if he would not be the mere tool of others. I have 
been pleased with a recent conversation on this point 
with a most enlightened and patriotic foreigner, one 
who loves his own country and therefore loves ours, 
and who looks with deep anxiety on the tide of foreign 
emigration that sets, at the direction of our enemies, 
into our ballot boxes. Gladly, said he, would I relin- 
quish my privilege as a voter, could I help you to ward 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 315 

off the evil that I see you suffering from the multitudes 
of foreign paupers and venal masses of men, that 
threaten to undermine your institutions. 

Another intelligent and excellent foreigner expressed 
the opinion that twenty-one years' residence in this 
country ought to be required by law before voting; at 
least as long as a native citizen is obliged to spend 
from the birth, before he can enjoy this privilege. In 
fact, without some such requisition, we degrade our- 
selves in comparison with all other nations. We put 
a premium upon the foreigner, and we open our dear- 
est interests to the undermining efforts of all forms of 
Jesuitism in the world. Little would there be to fear 
from the efforts of Roman Catholics among us, if a 
twenty-one years' residence, or the half of it were neces- 
sary before foreigners could vote. The temptation to 
buy votes and to sell them, to bribe and to be bribed, 
and to drag foreign paupers to the polls as soon as they 
are landed, would be in great measure taken away. The 
greatest sources of evil in our elections would be cut 
off, and the whole play of our affairs would be easier 
and fairer. 

In general, it is a fact that those affinities which lead 
men to emigrate to this country do not indicate the 
right sort of character for our institutions. The radi- 
calism of Europe is not what we want. The Radicals 
of Europe are not fit to be Republicans. Loyalty is a 
virtue ; but those who pour in upon us from Europe are 
too often loyal to nothing but ignorance and unset- 
tled principles. I would a thousand times rather have 
a tide of emigration from the strongest tories; for a 
man who is not loyal to his king in a country like Eng- 
land, will have no patriotism at all in a Republic like 
ours. If the kingdoms of Europe had conspired for 



3i6 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

our destruction, they could not have adopted a more 
judicious plan, than to roll over us a ground-wave 
from their own uneducated population. The ignorant, 
venal, miscreant character of a great portion of it, forms 
one of our greatest dangers. This is an evil that in- 
creases all our native evils, whatever they may be. 

Another evil which I must notice is this, — the want 
of a sense of national responsibility, the want of a na- 
tional conscience. We are not worse than England in 
this respect. God forbid ! — but this gives us no high 
character : and it is to be remembered that a degree of 
wickedness, which in a monarchy and a profligate aris- 
tocracy is expected, and hardly noticed, and which is 
but as another coating of moss over the weather-beaten 
castles of oppression, may shake our institutions to 
pieces. "The best governments," said Lord Bacon, in 
one of his excellent aphorisms, "are always subject to 
be like the fairest crystals, wherein every icicle or grain 
is seen, which in a fouler stone is never perceived." 
A disregard of rectitude and a violence and cruelty of 
invasion on our part, like that which has marked the 
unprincipled career of England in China and Afghan- 
istan, would have turned the whole world against us. 

We have the evil of a national conscience warped by 
conflicting interests among State governments. At the 
iniquitous suit, and under the rapacious outcry of one of 
our States, a national treaty with the Indians is no 
more regarded than a parchment of the dark ages. One 
or two acts of public fraud upon large masses, allowed 
or connived at by the government, will go far to com- 
promit its principles; and besides, will set an example 
to the State governments that cannot fail to be fol- 
lowed. If the government of the United States begin 
with injustice and oppression, no matter upon what 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 317 

class, or for what supposed necessity, the government 
of the States will continue the career in public repudi- 
ation, and then private corporations will follow the 
example in enormous acts of swindling, and private in- 
dividuals and fraudulent bankrupts and defaulters will 
complete the game. Corruption thus may spread to the 
heart's core, while yet every thing external looks fair 
and flourishing. This monstrous form of public de- 
bauchery, the repudiation of State debts, rivals the cata- 
logue of State vices all the world over. The burning 
indignation and sarcasm of a Juvenal would have found 
nothing to surpass it in meanness, in cowardice, in 
falsehood, in iniquity, even among the rotting corrup- 
tions of public and private morality in the carcass of the 
Roman Empire. And what argues, and no wonder that 
it should, to the mind of observers from abroad, a por- 
tentous dereliction of moral principle and public con- 
science throughout the whole country, is the callous- 
ness, the apathy, the cool endurance, with which the 
proposition of such perfidious, such swindling, such 
sweeping insolvency has been received. Surely, if we 
go on in this way, we shall become a by- word to the 
nations. It will no longer be Pimica fides that points 
the moral of the school-boy, and tips the arrow of the 
public satirist with gall. 

Another evil which I shall notice, and a great dan- 
ger, because it springs partly out of the freedom we 
enjoy, is to be found in the nature, prevalence, and 
power of our Newspaper Literature. It is left in great 
measure to chance, or to the upturnings of political 
party scum, who shall be its leaders, and what may be 
its shape; and )^et there is nothing that should be 
guarded with more watchfulness, nothing into which 
the spirit of a pure morality and high political honour, 



3i8 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

and true patriotism, is more needful to be breathed. 
There is nothing of such mighty power among us, no 
machinery that will exert a more inevitable influence 
either to bless or to destroy. The influence of our 
newspapers upon our higher literature is deplorable; 
but this would be nothing if the public utterances of 
our newspapers were utterances of truth. They are be- 
coming a school of Sophists worse than ever w^ere bred 
in the literature of Greece. As to the Sophists in that 
country, the opinion of Schlegel that the political pur- 
ity of the Grecian governments was at last entirely 
overthrown by them is deeply to be pondered; for the 
same sophistry may reign here, which there had the 
merit of creating a spirit of corruption and debasement, 
which neither party-strife, nor protracted wars, nor 
foreign bribery, nor bloody revolutions, had been able 
to produce. No Sophists ever walked beneath the open 
air of that delicious clime, and taught the people, whose 
influence was to be compared to that of the daily issues 
of the newspaper press in this country. Nor can we 
speak the painfulness of our emotions, w^hen we see 
these daily schools of thousands of our people under 
the care of mere hirelings ; when we see some of the 
leading journals of our land in the hands of men utterly 
destitute of moral principle. 

I shall mention but one more danger; it is connected 
with the prevalence of Romanism. Men have some- 
times descanted on the danger of an impermm in im- 
perio. Looking at the universal nature of Romanism 
as developed in the world's history, I confess that I am 
afraid of it. The Romanists move in close phalanx. 
There is a power in the Vatican at Rome, which they 
still acknowledge; they are proud of it; and never yet 
has one of the assumptions of that man of sin, who 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER 319 

still "sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that 
he is God," been laid aside. It is an amusing- picture 
that Bunyan has drawn of the Pope in his cave, as a 
rheumatic old giant, biting his lips, and mumbling be- 
tween his teeth to the passing pilgrims, "You will never 
mend till more of you are burned." There are signs in 
some quarters of Giant Grim's rheumatism being cured. 
At all events, he still has an arm long enough to reach 
across the Atlantic; and if it be true that the Roman 
Catholic voters in this country will move at his bid- 
ding, then, since it is true that the phalanx of such 
voters is strong enough to sway the balance between 
parties, there may be some probability in the assertion 
that ten years will not pass away, before the President 
of these United States will be nominated in the Vati- 
can. That Romanism is the same in this country as 
in the old world, is sufficiently manifest from its hos- 
tility against the Scriptures. We have witnessed in 
this very State a monstrous act of sacrilege in an Atito 
da fe of Romanists for the burning of the Word of God, 
and two hundred Bibles were committed to the flames ! 
I confess that I am afraid of the action of Romanism 
upon my country's liberties. I am afraid of the influ- 
ence of whatever is afraid of the Bible. If there be a 
sect that lives by shutting out the light, in a country 
like ours, such a system is dangerous. It has been re- 
marked with great point and power, on the occasion of 
the recent Biblical Conflagration, that the only light, 
which the system of Romanism would willingly shed 
from the Bible on the people, is "the light of its holy 
leaves on fire." 

Gentlemen of the New England Society; — I am 
grateful for the opportunity of addressing you on this 
occasion. We all recognise and venerate the New Eng- 



320 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

land privilege of speaking one's mind. Scut ire quid 
velis, ct quod sentias diccre, to think what you please, 
and to speak what you think, we hope will ever be an ele- 
ment in the civil, social, and religious atmosphere of that 
beloved native region of ours, where no slave breathes, 
and if the genius of New England can prevent it, never 
shall ! Suffer me to close with the Memory of our 
Pilgrim Fathers, and with the grateful recognition 
of the truth, that as they did what never had been done 
in Europe, founded an Empire in self-denial, suffering, 
and the most unwavering trust in God, so we, more 
than any other nation in the world, two hundred years 
after the landing of the Pilgrims, are thrown entirely 
upon the Spirit of God for the success and stability of 
our institutions. A Despotism may stand by the very 
misery of its subjects; a free and happy Republic can 
stand only by the blessing and the help of God. 



THE AGE OF THE PILGRIMS THE HEROIC 
PERIOD OF OUR HISTORY 

RUFUS CHOATE 

THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTH 

DANIEL WEBSTER 



1843 



RUFUS CHOATE 

(1799-1859.) 

Hon. Rufus Choate, then senator, was the speaker for 1843. His 
impassioned oration was received with great enthusiasm. One 
of its sentences, slightly altered, "A church without a bishop 
and a state without a king," was made the burden of popular 
songs, and was turned to serious use by two divines of the 
city. Dr. Wainwright, rector of St. John's Church, in replying 
at the dinner that evening to the toast "The Clergy of New 
England," quoted the orator's words. They were for the sec- 
ond time warmly applauded. 

"Now, sir," continued the clergyman, turning to the president, 
Mr. Grinnell, "notwithstanding the strong burst of approba- 
tion to the sentiment, were this a proper arena, should even 
the orator of the day throw down his gauntlet, I would take it 
up and maintain on the opposite side, that there can be no 
church without a bishop." 

Shortly in the "Commercial Advertiser" appeared a reply by Dr. 
Potts, a Presbyterian minister. The ensuing argument in the 
columns of that daily attracted much attention. A satiric jingle 
in the "Post" thus comments on the affair : 

"A church without a bishop seems 
To Dr. This a thing of dreams. 
While Dr. That, his reverend brother, 
Counts it as good as any other. 
But while each shepherd, waxing bold 
On merits of his several fold. 
Deals out decisive blows and knocks. 
The wolf eats up their several flocks." 

The debate closed at length with a formal essay from the Epis- 
copalian and a reply from his opponent, all the papers being 
later printed in a thin volume, edited by Dr. Wainwright. It 



RUFUS CHOATE 323 

is said that these distinctly unpleasant polemics did not dis- 
turb the former cordial relations of the combatants, though the 
closing lines of Dr. Wainwright's volume, the prayer for char- 
ity, quoted from the Prayer Book, come with humorous ap- 
propriateness after the hardly gentle words of the preceding 
pages. 

Mr. Webster, though never orator of the day, spoke three times 
at the annual dinners. At that of 1832 he responded to the 
following words from the president : "Greece and Rome had 
their orators, we have ours, whose able defense of the consti- 
tution entitles them to the gratitude of their countrymen. 
Daniel Webster : New England points to him and says, 'Be- 
hold my son !' " There is no record of this address, but those of 
1843 and 1850 are preserved in his collected works. 

The oration by Mr. Choate, at the Tabernacle in the morning, 
and the presence of the two statesmen as guests at the Astor 
House in the evening, mark the celebration of 1843 as the 
greatest in the Society's annals. It was in response to the 
graceful toast, "Daniel Webster — the gift of New England to 
his country, his whole country, and nothing but his country," 
that Mr. Webster rose. 



ORATION 



WE meet again, the children of the Pilgrims, to 
remember our fathers. Away from the scenes 
with which the American portions of their history are 
associated forever, and in all men's minds, — scenes so 
unadorned, yet clothed to the moral eye with a charm 
above the sphere of taste, the uncrumbled rock, the 
hill from whose side those "delicate springs" are still 
gushing, the wide, brown, low woods, the sheltered 
harbor, the little island that welcomed them in their 
frozen garments from the sea, and witnessed the rest 
and worship of that Sabbath-day before their landing, 
— away from all those scenes, — without the limits of 
the fond old colony that keeps their graves, without 
the limits of the New England which is their wider 
burial place and fitter monument, — in the heart of this 
chief city of the nation into which the feeble land has 
grown, — we meet again, to repeat their names one by 
one, to retrace the lines of their character, to recall the 
lineaments and forms over which the grave has no 
power, to appreciate their virtues, to recount the course 
of their life full of heroic deeds, varied by sharpest 
trials, crowned by transcendent consequences, to assert 
the directness of our descent from such an ancestry of 
goodness and greatness, to erect, refresh, and touch 
our spirits by coming for an hour into their more im- 
mediate presence, such as they were in the days of their 

325 



326 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

human "agony of glory." The two centuries which 
interpose to hide them from our eye, centuries so bril- 
Hant with progress, so crowded by incidents, so fertile 
in accumulations, dissolve away for the moment as a 
curtain of clouds, and we are once more by their side. 
The grand and pathetic series of their story unrolls 
itself around us, vivid as if with the life of yesterday. 
All the stages, all the agents, of the process by which 
they and the extraordinary class they belonged to, were 
slowly formed from the general mind and character of 
England ; the influence of the age of the Reformation, 
with which the whole Christian world was astir to its 
profoundest depths and outermost limits, but which was 
poured out unbounded and peculiar on them, its chil- 
dren, its impersonation; that various persecution pro- 
longed through two hundred years and twelve reigns, 
from the time of the preaching of Wicklifife, to the 
accession of James the First, from which they gathered 
sadly so many precious fruits, — a large measure of ten- 
derness of conscience, the sense of duty, force of will, 
trust in God, the love of truth, and the spirit of liberty; 
the successive development and growth of opinions and 
traits and determinations and fortunes, by which they 
were advanced from Protestants to Republicans, from 
Englishmen to Pilgrims, from Pilgrims to the found- 
ers of a free Church, and the fathers of a free people 
in a new world ; the retirement to Holland ; the resolu- 
tion to seek the sphere of their duties and the asylum of 
their rights beyond the sea; the embarkation at Delft 
Haven, — that scene of interest unrivalled, on which a 
pencil of your own has just enabled us to look back 
with tears, praise, and sympathy, and the fond pride 
of children ; that scene of few and simple incidents, just 
the setting out of a handful of not then very famous 
persons on a voyage, — quite the commonest of occur- 



RUFUS CHOATE 327 

rences, — but which dilates as you gaze on it, and speaks 
to you as with the voices of an immortal song; which 
becomes idealized into the auspicious going forth of a 
colony, whose planting has changed the history of the 
world, — a noble colony of devout Christians, educated 
and firm men, valiant soldiers, and honorable women; 
a colony on the commencement of whose heroic enter- 
prise the selectest influences of religion seemed to be 
descending visibly, and beyond whose perilous path are 
hung the rainbow and the westward star of empire ; the 
voyage of The Mayflower; the landing; the slow win- 
ter's night of disease and famine in which so many, 
the good, the beautiful, the brave sunk down and died, 
giving place at last to the spring-dawn of health and 
plenty; the meeting with the old red race on the hill 
beyond the brook ; the treaty of peace unbroken for half 
a century; the organization of a republican govern- 
ment in The Mayflower cabin; the planting of these 
kindred and coeval and auxiliar institutions, without 
which such a government can no more live than the up- 
rooted tree can put forth leaf or flower; institutions 
to diffuse pure religion; good learning; austere moral- 
ity; the practical arts of administration; labor, pa- 
tience, obedience; "plain living and high thinking;" 
the securities of conservatism; the germs of progress; 
the laying deep and sure, far down on the rock of ages, 
of the foundation stones of the imperial structure, 
whose dome now swells towards heaven; the timely 
death at last, one after another, of the first generation 
of the original Pilgrims, not unvisited as the final hour 
drew nigh, by visions of the more visible glory of a 
latter day, — all these high, holy, and beautiful things 
come thronging fresh on all our memories, beneath the 
influence of the hour. Such as we heard them from 
our mothers' lips, such as we read them in the histories 



328 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

of kings, of religions, and of liberty, they gather them- 
selves about us; familiar, certainly, but of an interest 
that can never die, — an interest intrinsical in them- 
selves, yet heightened inexpressibly by their relations 
to that eventful future into which they have expanded, 
and through whose lights they show. 

And yet, with all this procession of events and per- 
sons moving before us, and solicited this way and that 
by the innumerable trains of speculation and of feeling 
which such a sight inspires, we can think of nothing 
and of nobody, here and now, but the Pilgrims them- 
selves. I cannot, and do not, wish for a moment to 
forget, that it is their festival we have come to keep. 
It is their tabernacles we have come to build. It is not 
the Reformation, it is not colonization, it is not our- 
selves, our present or our future, it is not political 
economy, or political philosophy, of which to-day you 
would have me say a word. We have a specific and 
single duty to perform. We would speak of certain 
valiant, good, and peculiar men, our fathers. We 
would wipe the dust from a few old, plain, noble urns. 
We would shun husky disquisitions, irrelevant novel- 
ties, and small display; would recall rather and merely 
the forms and lineaments of the heroic dead, — forms 
and features which the grave has not changed, over 
which the grave has no power. 

The Pilgrims, then, of the first generation, just as 
they landed on the rock, are the topic of the hour. And 
in order to insure some degree of unity, and of definite- 
ness of aim, and of impression, let me still more pre- 
cisely propound as the subject of our thoughts, the Pil- 
grims, their age and their acts, as constituting a real 
and a true heroic period; one heroic period in the his- 
tory of this Republic. 

I regard it as a great thing for a nation to be able, 



RUFUS CHOATE 329 

as it passes through one sign after another of its zodiac 
pathway, in prosperity, in adversity, and at all times, — 
to be able to look to an authentic race of founders, and 
a historical principle of institution, in which it may 
rationally admire the realized idea of true heroism. 
Whether it looks back in the morning or evening of its 
day; whether it looks back as now we do, in the emu- 
lous fervor of its youth, or in the full strength of man- 
hood, its breasts full of milk, its bones moistened with 
marrow; or in dotage and faintness, the silver cord of 
union loosened, the golden bowl of fame and power 
broken at the fountain ; from the era of Pericles or the 
era of Plutarch, — it is a great and precious thing to 
be able to ascend to, and to repose its strenuous or its 
wearied virtue upon, a heroic age and a heroic race, 
which it may not falsely call its own. I mean by a 
heroic age and race, not exclusively or necessarily the 
earliest national age and race, but one, the course of 
whose history and the traits of whose character, and 
the extent and permanence of whose influences, are of a 
kind and power not merely to be recognized in after 
time as respectable or useful, but of a kind and a power 
to kindle and feed the moral imagination, move the 
capacious heart, and justify the intelligent wonder of 
the world. I mean by a nation's heroic age, a time 
distinguished above others, not by chronological rela- 
tion alone, but by a concurrence of grand and impres- 
sive agencies with large results, — by some splendid and 
remarkable triumph of man over some great enemy, 
some great evil, some great labor, some great danger, — 
by uncommon examples of the rarer virtues and quali- 
ties, tried by an exigency that occurs only at the begin- 
ning of new epochs, the ascension of new dynasties of 
dominion or liberty, when the great bell of time sounds 
out another hour. I mean an age when extraordinary 



330 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

traits are seen, an age performing memorable deeds 
whereby a whole people, whole generations, are made 
different and made better. I mean an age and race to 
which the arts may go back, and find real historical 
forms and groups, wearing the port and grace, and 
going on the errand of demi-gods, — an age far off, on 
whose moral landscape the poet's eye may light, and 
reproduce a grandeur and beauty stately and eternal, 
transcending that of ocean in storm or at peace, or of 
mountains, staying as with a charm the morning star 
in his steep course, or the twilight of a summer's day, 
or voice of solemn bird, — an age "doctrinal and exem- 
plary," from whose personages, and from whose ac- 
tions, the orator may bring away an incident, or a 
thought, that shall kindle a fire in ten thousand hearts, 
as on altars to their country's glory; and to which the 
discouraged teachers of patriotism and morality to 
corrupted and expiring States, may resort for examples 
how to live and how to die. 

You see, then, that certain peculiar conditions and 
elements must meet to make a heroic period and a he- 
roic race. You might call, without violence, the men 
who brought on and went through the war of Inde- 
pendence, or fell on the high places of its fields, — you 
might call them and their times heroic. But you would 
not so describe the half-dozen years from the peace to 
the Constitution, nor the wise men who framed that 
writing, nor the particular generation that had the sa- 
gacity and the tone to adopt it. Yet was this a grander 
achievement than many a Yorktown, many a Saratoga, 
many a Eutaw Springs; and this, too, in some just 
sense was the beginning of a national experience. To 
justify the application of this epithet, there must be in 
it somewhat in the general character of a period, and 
the character and fortunes of its actors, to warm the 



RUFUS CHOATE 331 

imagination, and to touch the heart. There must, 
therefore, be some of the impressive forms of danger 
there; there must be the reaHty of suffering, borne 
with the dignity of an unvanquished soul ; there must be 
pity and terror in the epic, as in the tragic volume; 
there must be a great cause, acting on a conspicuous 
stage, or swelling towards an imperial consummation; 
some great interest of humanity must be pleading there 
on fields of battle, or in the desert, or on the sea ! 

When these constituents, or such as these, concur, 
there is a heroic time and race. Other things are of 
small account. It may be an age of rude manners. 
Prominent men may cook their own suppers, like 
Achilles, yet how many millions of imaginations, be- 
sides Alexander's, have trem_bled at his anger, shud- 
dered at his revenge, sorrowed with his griefs, kindled 
with his passion of glory, melted as he turns gently 
and kindly from the tears of Priam, childless, or be- 
reaved of his dearest and bravest by his unmatched arm ; 
— divine faces, like that of Rose Standish in the pic- 
ture, may look out, as hers there does, not from the 
worst possible head-dress ; men may have worn steeple- 
crowned hats, and long, peculiar beards ; they may have 
been austere, formal, intolerant; they may have them- 
selves possessed not one ray of fancy, not one emotion 
of taste, not one susceptibility to the grace and sub- 
limity that there are in nature and genius; yet may 
their own lives and deaths have been a whole Iliad in 
action, grander, sweeter, of more mournful pathos, of 
more purifying influences, than anything yet sung by 
old or modern bard, in hall or bower. See, then, if we 
can find any of the constituents of such a period, in the 
character, time, and fortunes of the Pilgrims. 

"Plantations," says Lord Bacon, "are amongst an- 
cient, primitive, and heroical works." But he is think- 



332 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ing of plantations as they are the king's works, like 
parks or palaces, or solemn temples, or steadfast pyra- 
mids, as they show forth the royal mind, and heighten 
the royal glory. We are to seek the heroical ingredient 
in the planter himself, in the ends for which he set 
forth, the difficulties with which he contended, the 
triumphs which he won, the teeming harvest, sprung 
from seed sown with his tears. And we shall find it 
there. 

It would be interesting, if it were possible, which it 
is not, to pause for a moment first, and survey the old 
English Puritan character, of which the Pilgrims were 
a variety. Turn to the class of which they were part, 
and consider it well for a minute in all its aspects. I 
see in it an extraordinary mental and moral phenome- 
non. Many more graceful and more winning forms of 
the human nature there have been, and are, and shall 
be. Many men, many races there are, have been, and 
shall be, of more genial dispositions, more tasteful ac- 
complishment, a quicker eye for the beautiful of art 
and nature; less disagreeably absorbed, less gloomily 
careful and troubled about the mighty interests of the 
spiritual being or of the commonwealth; wearing a 
more decorated armor in battle ; contributing more wit, 
more song, and heartier potations, to the garland feast 
of life. But where, in the long series of ages that fur- 
nish the matter of history, was there ever one — where 
one — better fitted by the possession of the highest traits 
of man to do the noblest work of man, — better fitted 
to consummate and establish the Reformation, save the 
English constitution at its last gasp from the fate of all 
other European constitutions, and prepare on the gran- 
ite and iced mountain-summits of the New World, a 
still safer rest, for a still better liberty ? 

I can still less pause to trace the history of these men 



RUFUS CHOATE 333 

as a body, or even to enumerate the succession of influ- 
ences — the spirit of the Reformation within, two hun- 
dred years of civil and spiritual tyranny without — 
which, between the preaching of Wickliffe and the ac- 
cession of James I., had elaborated them out of the gen- 
eral mind of England ; had attracted to their ranks so 
much of what was wisest and best of their nation and 
time ; had cut and burned, as it were, into their natures 
the iron quality of the higher heroism, — and so accom- 
plished them for their great work there and here. The 
whole story of the cause and the effect is told in one 
of their own illustrations a little expanded : "Puritan- 
ism was planted vn the region of storms, and there it 
grew. Swayed this way, and that, by a whirlwind of 
blasts all adverse, it sent down its roots below frost, or 
drought, or the bed of the avalanche ; its trunk went up, 
erect, gnarled, seamed, not riven by the bolt; the ever- 
green enfolded its branches ; its blossom was like to that 
'ensanguined flower inscribed with woe.' " 

One influence there was, however, I would mark, 
whose permanent and various agency on the doctrines, 
the character, and the destinies of Puritanism, is among 
the most striking things in the whole history of opin- 
ion. I mean its contact with the republican reformers 
of the continent, and particularly with those of Geneva. 

In all its stages, certainly down to the peace of West- 
phalia, in 1648, all the disciples of the Reformation, 
wherever they lived, were in some sense a single bro- 
therhood, whom diversity of speech, hostility of gov- 
ernments, and remoteness of place, could not wholly 
keep apart. Local persecutions drew the tie closer. In 
the reign of Mary, from 1553 to 1558, a thousand 
learned Englishmen fled from the stake at home, to the 
happier states of continental Protestantism. Of these, 
great numbers, I know not how many, came to Geneva. 



334 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

There they awaited the death of the Queen; and then, 
sooner or later, but in the time of Elizabeth, went back 
to England. 

I ascribe to that five years in Geneva an influence 
which has changed the history of the world. I seem to 
myself to trace to it, as an influence on the English race, 
a new theology; new politics; another tone of charac- 
ter; the opening of another era of time and of liberty. 
I seem to myself to trace to it the great civil war of 
England ; the Republican Constitution framed in the 
cabin of The Mayflower ; the divinity of Jonathan Ed- 
wards ; the battle of Bunker Hill ; the Independence of 
America. In that brief season, English Puritanism 
was changed fundamentally, and forever. Why should 
we think this extraordinary? There are times when 
whole years pass over the head of a man, and work no 
change of mind at all. There are others again, when, 
in an hour, old things pass away, and all things become 
new ! A verse of the Bible ; a glorious line of some old 
poet, dead a thousand years before ; the new-made grave 
of a child ; a friend killed by a thunder-bolt ; some sin- 
gle, more intolerable pang of despised love ; some more 
intolerable act of "the oppressor's wrong, the proud 
man's contumely;" a gleam of rarer beauty on a lake, 
or in the sky ; something slighter than the fall of a leaf, 
or a bird's song on the shore, — transforms him as in 
the twinkling of an eye. When, before or since, in the 
history of the world, was the human character subjected 
to an accumulation of agents, so fitted to create it all 
anew, as those which encompassed the English exiles 
at Geneva? 

I do not make much account in this, of the material 
grandeur and beauty which burst on their astonished 
senses there, as around the solitude of Patmos, — al- 
though I cannot say that I know, or that anybody 



RUFUS CHOATE 335 

knows, that these mountain summits, ascending "from 
their silent sea of pines," higher than the thunder cloud, 
reposing among their encircling stars, while the storm 
sweeps by below, before which navies, forests, the cathe- 
dral tombs of kings, go down, all on fire with the rising 
and descending glory of the sun, wearing his rays as a 
crown, unchanged, unsealed ; the contrasted lake ; the 
arrowy Rhone and all his kindred torrents; the em- 
bosomed city, — I cannot say that these things have no 
power to touch and fashion the nature of man. I can- 
not say that in the leisure of exile, a cultivated and 
pious mind, opened, softened, tinged with a long sor- 
row, haunted by a brooding apprehension, perplexed 
by mysterious providences, waiting for the unravelling 
of the awful drama in England, — a mind, if such there 
were, like Luther's, like Milton's, like Zwingle's, might 
not find itself stayed, and soothed, and carried upward, 
at some evening hour, by these great symbols of a 
duration without an end, and a throne above the sky. 
I cannot say that such an impression might not be deep- 
ened by a renewed view, until the outward glory repro- 
duced itself in the inward strength ; or until 

"The dilating soul, enwrapt, transfused, 
Into the mighty vision passing there, 
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven." 

Nobody can say that. 

It is of the moral agents of change that I would 
speak. I pass over the theology which they learned 
there, to remark on the politics which they learned. The 
asylum into which they had been admitted, the city 
which had opened its arms to pious, learned men, ban- 
ished by the tyranny of an English throne and an Eng- 
lish hierarchy, was a republic. In the giant hand of 



336 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

guardian mountains, on the banks of a lake lovelier 
than a dream of the Fairy Land, in a valley which 
might seem hollowed out to enclose the last home of 
liberty, there smiled an independent, peaceful, law-abid- 
ing, well-governed, and prosperous commonwealth. 
There was a state without king or nobles ; there was a 
church without a bishop; there was a people governed 
by grave magistrates which it had selected, and equal 
laws which it had framed. And to the eye of these 
exiles, bruised and pierced through by the accumulated 
oppressions of a civil and spiritual tyranny, to whom 
there came tidings every day from England that an- 
other victim had been struck down, on whose still dear 
home in the sea, every day a gloomier shadow seemed 
to fall from the frowning heights of power, was not 
that republic the brightest image in the whole trans- 
cendent scene? Do you doubt that they turned from 
Alpine beauty and Alpine grandeur, to look with a 
loftier emotion, for the first time in their lives, on the 
serene, unveiled statue of classical Liberty? Do you 
not think that this spectacle, in these circumstances, 
prompted in such minds pregnant doubts, daring hopes, 
new ideas, thoughts that wake to perish never, doubts, 
hopes, ideas, thoughts, of which a new age is born? 
Was it not then and there that the dream of republican 
liberty — a dream to be realized somewhere, perhaps in 
England, perhaps in some region of the Western sun — 
first mingled itself with the general impulses, the gar- 
nered hopes of the Reformation? Was that dream 
ever let go, down to the morning of that day when the 
Pilgrims met in the cabin of their shattered bark, and 
there, as she rose full on the stern New England sea, 
and the voices of the November forest rang through 
her torn topmast rigging, subscribed the first republi- 
can constitution of the New World ? I confess myself 



RUFUS CHOATE 337 

of the opinion of those who trace to this spot, and that 
time, the RepubHcanism of the Puritans. I do not sup- 
pose, of course, that they went back with the formal 
design to change the government of England. The 
contests and the progress of seventy years more were 
required, to mature and realize so vast a conception as 
that. I do not suppose, either, that learned men, — 
students of antiquity, the readers of Aristotle and 
Thucydides and Cicero, the contemporaries of Bu- 
chanan, the friends of his friend, John Knox, — needed 
to go to Geneva to acquire the idea of a commonwealth. 
But there they saw the problem solved. Popular gov- 
ernment was possible. The ancient prudence and the 
modern, the noble and free genius of the old Paganism 
and the Christianity of the Reformation, law and lib- 
erty, might be harmoniously blended in living systems. 
This experience they never forgot. 

I confess, too, that I love to trace the pedigree of our 
transatlantic liberty, thus backwards through Switzer- 
land, to its native land of Greece. I think this the true 
line of succession, down which it has been transmitted. 
There was a liberty which the Puritans found, kept, 
and improved in England. They would have changed 
it, and were not able. But that was a kind which ad- 
mitted and demanded an inequality of many; a subor- 
dination of ranks ; a favored eldest son ; the ascending 
orders of a hierarchy; the vast and constant pressure 
of a superincumbent crown. It was the liberty of feu- 
dalism. It was the liberty of a limited monarchy, over- 
hung and shaded by the imposing architecture of great 
antagonistic elements of the state. Such was not the 
form of liberty which our fathers brought with them. 
Allowing, of course, for that anomalous tie which con- 
nected them with the English crown three thousand 
miles off, it was republican freedom, as perfect the mo- 



338 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ment they stepped on the rock as it is to-day. It had 
not been all born in the woods of Germany: by the 
Elbe or Eyder; or the plains of Runnymede. It was 
the child of other climes and days. It sprang to life 
in Greece. It gilded next the early and the middle 
age of Italy. It then reposed in the hallowed breast 
of the Alps. It descended at length on the iron-bound 
coast of New England, and set the stars of glory there. 
At every stage of its course, at every reappearance, it 
was guarded by some new security : it was embodied in 
some new element of order ; it was fertile in some larger 
good ; it glowed with a more exceeding beauty. Speed 
its way; perfect its nature! 

"Take, Freedom ! take thy radiant round, 
When dimmed revive, when lost return. 
Till not a shrine through earth be found, 
On which thy glories shall not burn." 

Thus were laid the foundations of the mind and char- 
acter of Puritanism. Thus, slowly, by the breath of 
the spirit of the age, by the influence of undefiled reli- 
gion, by freedom of the soul, by much tribulation, by 
a wider survey of man, nature, and human life, it was 
trained to its work of securing and improving the lib- 
erty of England, and giving to America a better liberty 
of her own. Its day over, and its duty done, it was 
resolved into its elements, and disappeared among the 
common forms of humanity, apart from which it had 
acted and suffered, above which it had to move, out of 
which by a long process it had been elaborated. Of 
this stock were the Pilgrim Fathers. They came of 
heroical companionship. Were their Avorks heroical? 

The planting of a colony in a new world, which may 
grow, and which does grow, to a great nation, where 
there was none before, is intrinsically, and in the judg- 



RUFUS CHOATE 339 

ment of the world, of the largest order of human 
achievement. Of the chief of men are the conditores 
hnperioriun. To found a state upon a waste earth, 
wherein great numbers of human beings may live to- 
gether, and in successive generations, socially and in 
peace, knit to one another by the innumerous ties, light 
as air, stronger than links of iron, which compose the 
national existence, — wherein they may help each other, 
and be helped in bearing the various lot of life, — 
wherein they may enjoy and improve, and impart and 
heighten enjoyment and improvement. — wherein they 
may together perform the great social labors, may re- 
claim and decorate the earth, may disinter the treasures 
that grow beneath its surface, may invent and polish the 
arts of usefulness and beauty, may perfect the loftier 
arts of virtue and empire, open and work the richer 
mines of the universal youthful heart and intellect, and 
spread out a dwelling for the Muse on the glittering 
summits of Freedom, — to found such a state is first of 
heroical labors, and heroical glories. To build a pyra- 
mid or a harbor, to write an epic poem, to construct a 
system of the universe, to take a cit}^, are great, or may 
be, but far less than this. 

He, then, who sets a colony on foot, designs a great 
work. He designs all the good, and all the glory, of 
which, in the series of ages, it may be the means ; and he 
shall be judged more by the lofty ultimate aim and re- 
sult, than by the actual instant motive. You may well 
admire, therefore, the solemn and adorned plausibilities 
of the colonizing of Rome from Troy, in the ^neid; 
though the leader had been burned out of house and 
home, and could not choose but go. You may find in 
the flight of the female founder of the gloomy great- 
ness of Carthage, a certain epic interest; yet was she 
running from the madness of her husband to save her 



340 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

life. Emigrations from our stocked communities of 
undeified men and women, — emigrations for conquest, 
for gold, for very restlessness of spirit, — if they grow 
towards an imperial issue, have all thus a prescriptive 
and recognized ingredient of heroism. But when the 
immediate motive is as grand as the ultimate hope was 
lofty, and the ultimate success splendid, then, to use an 
expression of Bacon's, "the music is fuller." 

I distinguish, then, this enterprise of our fathers, in 
the first place, by the character of the immediate motive. 

And that was, first, a sense of religious duty. They 
had adopted opinions in religion, which they fully be- 
lieved they ought to profess, and a mode of public wor- 
ship and ordinances, which they fully believed they 
ought to observe. They could not do so in England ; 
and they went forth — man, woman, the infant at the 
breast — across an ocean in winter, to find a wilderness 
where they could. To the extent of this motive, there- 
fore, they went forth to glorify God, and by obeying 
his written will, and his will unwritten, but uttered in 
the voice of conscience concerning the chief end of man. 

It was next, a thirst for freedom from unnecessary 
restraint, which is tyranny, — freedom of the soul, free- 
dom of thought, a larger measure of freedom of life, — 
a thirst which two centuries had been kindling, a thirst 
which must be slaked, though but from the mountain 
torrent, though but from drops falling from the thun- 
der cloud, though but from fountains lone and far, and 
guarded as the diamond of the desert. 

These were the motives, — the sense of duty, and the 
spirit of liberty. Great sentiments, great in man, in 
nations, "pregnant with celestial fire!" — wherewithal 
could you fashion a people for the contentions and 
honors and uses of the imperial state so well as by ex- 
actly these? To what, rather than these, would you 



RUFUS CHOATE 34 1 

wish to trace up the first beatings of the nation's heart? 
If, from the whole field of occasion and motive, you 
could have selected the very passion, the very chance, 
which should begin your history, the very texture and 
pattern and hue of the glory which should rest on its 
first days, could you have chosen so well? The sense 
of duty, the spirit of liberty, not prompting to vanity 
or luxury or dishonest fame, to glare or clamor or 
hollow circumstance of being, silent, intense, earnest, 
of force to walk through the furnace of fire, yea, the 
valley of the shadow of death, to open a path amid the 
sea, to make the wilderness to bud and blossom as the 
rose, to turn back half a world in arms, to fill the am- 
plest measure of a nation's praise ! 

I am glad, then, that one of our own poets could 
truly say, 

"Nor lure of conquest's meteor beam, 
Nor dazzling mines of fancy's dream, 
Nor wild adventure's love to roam, 
Brought from their fathers' ancient home. 
O'er the wide sea, the Pilgrim host !" 

I should be glad of it, if I were looking back to the past 
of our history merely for the moral picturesque, — if I 
were looking back merely to find splendid moral scen- 
ery, mountain elevations, falls of water watched by the 
rainbow of sunlight and moonlight, colossal forms, 
memorable deeds, renown and grace that could not die, 
if I were looking merely to find materials for sculp- 
ture, for picture, for romance, — subjects for the ballad 
by which childhood shall be sung to sleep, subjects for 
the higher minstrelsy that may fill the eye of beauty and 
swell the bosom of manhood,— if I were looking back 
for these alone, I should be glad that the praise is true. 
Even to such an eye, the embarkation of the Pilgrims 



342 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

and the lone path of The Mayflower upon the "aston- 
ished sea" were a grander sight than navies of might- 
iest admirals seen beneath the lifted clouds of battle; 
grander than the serried ranks of armed men moving 
by tens of thousands to the music of an unjust glory. 
If you take to pieces and carefully inspect all the ef- 
forts, all the situations, of that moral sublime which 
gleams forth, here and there, in the true or the feigned 
narrative of human things, — deaths of martyrs, or mar- 
tyred patriots, or heroes in the hour of victory, revolu- 
tions, reformations, self-sacrifices, fields lost or won, — 
you will find nothing nobler at their source than the 
motives and the hopes of that ever-memorable voyage. 
These motives and these hopes — the sacred sentiments 
of duty, obedience to the will of God, religious trust, 
and the spirit of liberty — have inspired, indeed, all the 
beautiful and all the grand in the history of man. The 
rest is commonplace. "The rest is vanity; the rest is 
crime." 

I distinguish this enterprise of our fathers next, by 
certain peculiarities of trial which it encountered and 
vanquished on the shores of the New World. You have 
seen the noble spring of character and motive from 
which the current of our national fortunes has issued 
forth. You can look around you to-day, and see into 
how broad and deep a stream that current has ex- 
panded, what beams of the sun, still climbing the east- 
ern sky, play on its surface, what accumulations of 
costly and beautiful things it bears along, through what 
valley of happiness and rest it rolls towards some 
mightier sea. But turn for a moment to its earlier 
course. 

The first generation of the Pilgrims arrived in 1620. 
I suppose that within fifty years more that generation 
had wholly passed away. Certainly its term of active 



RUFUS CHOATE 343 

labor and responsible care had been accomplished. 
Looking to its actual achievements, our first, perhaps 
our final impulse is, not to pity, but to congratulate these 
ancient dead, on the felicity and the glory of their 
lot on earth. In that brief time, not the full age of 
man, — in the years of nations, in the larger cycles of 
the race, less than a moment, — the New England which 
to-day we love, to which our hearts untravelled go back, 
even from this throne of the American commercial 
world, — that New England, in her groundwork and 
essential nature, was established forever between her 
giant mountains and her espoused sea. There already 
— ay, in The Mayflower's cabin, before they set foot 
on shore — was representative republican government. 
There were the congenial institutions and sentiments 
from which such government imbibes its power of life. 
There already, side by side, were the securities of con- 
servatism and the germs of progress. There already 
were the congregational church and the free school; 
the trial by jury; the statutes of distributions; just so 
much of the written and unwritten reason of England 
as might fitly compose the jurisprudence of liberty. 
By a happy accident, or instinct, there already was the 
legalized and organized town, that seminary and cen- 
tral point, and exemplification of elementary democ- 
racy. Silently adopted, everywhere and in all things 
assumed, penetrating and tinging everything, — the 
church, the government, law, education, the very struc- 
ture of the mind itself, — was the grand doctrine, that 
all men are born equal and born free, that they are 
born to the same inheritance exactly of chances and of 
hopes ; that every child, on every bosom, of right ought 
to be, equally with every other, invited and stimulated, 
by every social and every political influence, to strive 
for the happiest life, the largest future, the most 



344 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

conspicuous virtue, the fullest mind, the hrightest 
wreath. 

There already were all, or the chief and higher influ- 
ences, by which comes the heart of a nation. There 
was reverence of law, — "Our guardian angel, and our 
avenging friend." There were the councils of the still 
venerated aged. There was the open Bible. There 
were marriage, baptism, the burial of the dead, the keep- 
ing of the Sabbath-day, the purity of a sister's love, a 
mother's tears, a father's careful brow. All these things 
had been provided and garnered up. With how much 
practical sagacity they had been devised ; how skilfully 
adapted to the nature of things and the needs of men ; 
how well the principle of permanence had been har- 
monized with the principle of progression; what dif- 
fusiveness and immortality of fame they will insure, 
we have lived late enough to know. On these works, 
legible afar off, cut deep beyond the tooth of time, the 
long procession of the generations shall read their 
names. 

But we should miss the grandest and most salutary 
lesson of our heroic age ; we should miss the best proof 
and illustration of its heroic claims, if we should per- 
mit the wisdom with which that generation acted, to 
hide from our view the intensity and dignity with which 
they suffered. It was therefore that I was about to dis- 
tinguish this enterprise, in the second place, by certain 
peculiarities of its trials. 

The general fact and the mournful details of that 
extremity of suffering which marked the first few years 
from the arrival, you all know. It is not these I design 
to repeat. We have heard from our mothers' lips, that, 
although no man or woman or child perished by the 
arrow, mightier enemies encompassed them at the very 
water's edge. Of the whole number of one hundred. 



RUFUS CHOATE 345 

one half landed to die within a year, — almost one half 
in the first three months, — to die of disease brought on 
by the privations and confinement of the voyage, by 
wading to the land, by insufficient and unfit food and 
dress and habitation, — brought on thus, but rendered 
mortal by want of that indispensable and easy provi- 
sion which Christianity, which Civilization everywhere 
makes for all their sick. Once seven only were left in 
health and strength, to attend on the others. There 
and thus they died. "In a battle," said the admirable 
Robinson, writing from Leyden to the survivors in the 
June after they landed, — "in a battle it is not looked 
for but that divers should die; it is thought well for 
a side, if it get the victory, though with the loss of 
divers, if not too many or too great." But how sore a 
mortality in less than a year, almost within a fourth of 
that time, of fifty in one hundred ! 

In a late visit to Plymouth, I sought the spot where 
these earlier dead were buried. It was on a bank, 
somewhat elevated, near, fronting, and looking upon 
the waves, — symbol of what life had been to them, — 
ascending inland behind and above the rock, — symbol 
also of that Rock of Ages on which the dying had rested 
in the final hour. As the Pilgrims found these locali- 
ties, you might stand on that bank and hear the restless 
waters chafe and melt against that steadfast base; the 
unquiet of the world composing itself at the portals of 
the grave. There certainly were buried the first gov- 
ernor, and Rose, the wife of Miles Standish. "You 
will go to them," wrote Robinson in the same letter 
from which I have quoted, "but they shall not return 
to you." 

When this sharp calamity had abated, and before, 
came famine. "I have seen," said Edward Winslow, 
"strong men staggering through faintness for want of 



346 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

food." And after this, and during all this, and for 
years, there brooded in every mind, not a weak fear, 
but an intelligent apprehension, that at any instant — 
at midnight, at noonday, at the baptism, at the burial, 
in the hour of prayer — a foe more cruel than the grave, 
might blast in an hour that which disease and want 
had so hardly let live. How they bore all this, you 
also know. One fact suffices. When in April The 
Mayflower sailed for England, not one Pilgrim was 
found to go. 

The peculiarity which has seemed to me to distin- 
guish these trials of the Pilgrim Age from those, from 
the chief of those, which the general voice of literature 
has concurred to glorify as the trials of heroism; the 
peculiarity which gives to these, and such as these, the 
attributes of a truer heroism, is this — that they had to 
meet them on what was then an humble, obscure, and 
distant stage; with no numerous audience to look on 
and applaud, and cast its wreaths on the fainting brow 
of him whose life was rushing with his blood, and 
unsustained by a single one of those stronger and more 
stimulating and impulsive passions and aims and senti- 
ments, which carry a soldier to his grave of honor as 
joyfully as to the bridal bed. Where were the Pilgrims 
while in this furnace of affliction ? Who saw and cared 
for them? A hundred persons, understood to be Lol- 
lards, or Precisians, or Puritans, or Brownists, had 
sailed away some three thousand miles, to arrive on a 
winter's coast, in order to be where they could hear a 
man preach without a surplice! That was just about 
all, England, or the whole world of civilization, at first 
knew, or troubled itself to believe, about the matter. 
If every one had died of lung fever, or starved to death, 
or fallen by the tomahawk, that first winter, and The 
Mayflower had carried the news, I wonder how many 



RUFUS CHOATE 347 

of even the best in England — the accompHshed, the 
beautiful, the distinguished, the wise — would have 
heard of it. A heart, or more than one, in Leyden, 
would have broken; and that had been all. I wonder 
if King James would have cried as heartily as in the 
"Fortunes of Nigel" he does in anticipation of his own 
death and the sorrow of his subjects ! I wonder what 
in a later day the author of "Hudibras" and the author 
of the "Hind and Panther," would have found to say 
about it, for the wits of Charles the Second's court. 
What did anybody even in Puritan England know of 
these Pilgrims ? They had been fourteen years in Hol- 
land; English Puritanism was taking care of itself! 
They were alone on the earth; and there they stood 
directly, and only, in their great Taskmaster's eye. 
Unlike even the martyrs, around whose ascending 
chariot-wheels and horses of fire, congregations might 
come to sympathize, and bold blasphemers to be defied 
and stricken with awe, — these were all alone. Those 
two ranges of small houses, not over ten in all, with 
oil paper for windows; that ship, The Mayflower, rid- 
ing at the distance of a mile, — these were every memo- 
rial and trace of friendly civilization in New England. 
Primeval forests, a winter sea, a winter sky, enclosed 
them about, and shut out every approving and every 
sympathizing eye of man ! To play the part of heroism 
on its high places is not difificult. To do it alone, as 
seeing Him who is invisible, was the gigantic achieve- 
ment of our age and our race of heroism. 

I have said, too, that a peculiarity in their trial was, 
that they were unsustained altogether by every one of 
the passions, aims, stimulants, and excitations, — the an- 
ger, the revenge, the hate, the pride, the awakened 
dreadful thirst of blood, the consuming love of glory, 
that burn, as in volcanic isles, in the heart of a mere 



34> XEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

secularized heroism. Not one of all these aids did, or 
could, come in use for them at all. Their character 
and their situation, both, excluded them. Their ene- 
mies were disease, walking in darkness and wasting at 
noonday: famine which, more than all other calamity, 
bows the spirit of man. and teaches him what he is: 
the wilderness: spiritual foes in the high places of the 
unseen worid. Even when the first Indian was killed, 
— ^in presence of which enemy, let me say. not one ever 
quailed. — ^the exclamation of Robinson was, "Oh that 
you had converted some, before you had killed any!" 
Now. I say, the heroism which in a great cause can 
look all the more terrible ills that tiesh is heir to calmly 
in the face, and can tread them out as sparks under its 
feet without these aids, is at least as lofty a quality as 
that which cannot To my eye. as I look back, it looms 
on the shores of the past with a more towering gran- 
deur. It seems to me to speak from oiu: far ancestral 
life, a higher lesson, to a nobler nature: certainly it is 
the rarer and more difficult species. If one were called 
on to select the more glittering of the instances of 
military heroism to which the admiration of the world 
has been most attracted, he would make choice, I im- 
agine, of the instance of that desperate valor, with 
vrhich, in obedience to the laws. Leonidas and his three 
hundred Spartans, cast themselves headlong at the 
passes of Greece on the m}-riads of their Persian in- 
vaders. From the simple page of Herodotus, longer 
tiian from the Amphictyonic monument, or the games 
of the commemoration, that act speaks still to the tears 
and praise of all the world. Yet I agree with a late 
brilliant writer in his speculation on the probable feel- 
ings of that devoted band, left alone, or waiting, till 
day should break, the approach of a certain death in 
that solitary defile. "Their enthusiasm, and the rigid 



RUFUS CHOATE 349 

and Spartan spirit which had made all ties subsen'ient 
to obedience to the law, all excitement tame to that of 
battle, all pleasures dull to the anticipation of glory, 
probably rendered the hour preceding death the most 
enviable of their lives. They might have exulted in 
the same elevating fanaticism which distinguished af- 
terwards the followers of Mahomet, and have seen that 
opening paradise in immortality below, which the Mos- 
lemin beheld in anticipation above." Judge if it were 
not so. Judge if a more decorated and conspicuous 
stage was ever erected for the transaction of a deed of 
fame. Every eye in Greece ; even,- eye throughout the 
world of civilization, — throughout even the civilized 
and barbaric East, — was felt to be turned directly on the 
playing of that brief part. There passed round that 
narrow circle in the tent, the stem, warning image of 
Sparta, pointing to their shields and saying, "With 
these to-morrow, or upon them!" Consider that the 
one concentrated and comprehensive sentiment, graven 
on their souls as by fire and by steel ; by all the influ- 
ences of their whole life: by the mother's lips: by the 
father's example: by the law; by venerated religious 
rites; by public opinion strong enough to change the 
moral qualities of things; by the whole fashion and 
nature of Spartan culture, was this : seek first, seek 
last, seek always, the glory of conquering or falling on 
a well-fought field. Judge if that night, as they 
watched the dawn of the last morning their eyes could 
ever see; as they heard with every passing hour the 
hum of the invading host, his dusky lines stretched out 
without end. and now almost encircling them around : 
as they remembered their unprofaned home, cit}'- of 
heroes and of the mothers of heroes : judge if watching 
there in the gateway of Greece, this sentiment did not 
grow to the nature of madness ; if it did not run in tor- 



3 so NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

rents of literal fire to and from the laboring- heart. 
When morning came and passed, and they had dressed 
their long- locks, and when at noon the countless and 
glittering throng was seen at last to move, was it not 
with rapture, as if all the enjoyment of all the sensa- 
tions of life was in that one moment, that they cast 
themselves, with the fierce gladness of mountain tor- 
rents, on that brief revelry of glory? 

I acknowledge the splendor of that transaction in all 
its aspects. I admit its morality, too, and its useful 
influence on every Grecian heart, in that her great cri- 
sis. And yet do you not think, that whoso could by 
adequate description bring before you that first winter 
of the Pilgrims ; its brief sunshine ; the nights of storms 
slow waning; its damp or icy breath felt on the pillow 
of the dying ; its destitution ; its contrasts with all their 
former experience of life ; its insulation and utter lone- 
liness; its death-beds and burials; its memories; its ap- 
prehensions; its hopes; the consultations of the pru- 
dent ; the prayers of the pious ; the occasional hymn 
which may have soothed the spirit of Luther, in which 
the strong heart threw off its burden and asserted its 
un vanquished nature ; do you not think that whoso could 
describe them calmly waiting in that defile, lonelier and 
darker than Thermopylae, for a morning that might 
never dawn, or might show them when it did, a might- 
ier arm than the Persian, raised as in act to strike, 
would he not sketch a scene of more difficult and rarer 
heroism, — a scene, as Wordsworth has said, "Melan- 
choly, yea dismal, yet consolatory and full of joy," — 
a scene even better fitted than that to succor, to exalt, 
to lead the forlorn hopes of all great causes, till time 
shall be no more ? 

I can seem to see, as that hard and dark season was 
passing away, a diminished procession of these Pil- 



RUFUS CHOATE 35 1 

grims following another, dearly loved and newly dead, 
to that bank of graves, and pausing sadly there before 
they shall turn away to see that face no more. In full 
view from that spot is The Mayflower still riding at 
her anchor, but to sail in a few days more for Eng- 
land, leaving them alone, the living and the dead, to the 
weal or woe of their new home. I cannot say what 
was the entire emotion of that moment and that scene ; 
but the tones of the venerated elder's voice, as they 
gathered round him, were full of cheerful trust, and 
they went to hearts as noble as his own. "This spot," 
he might say, "this line of shore, yea, this whole land, 
grows dearer daily, were it only for the precious dust 
which we have committed to its bosom. I would sleep 
here and have my own hour come, rather than else- 
where, with those who shared with us in our exceeding 
labors, whose burdens are now unloosed forever. I 
would be near them in the last day, and have a part in 
their resurrection. And now," he proceeded, "let us 
go from the side of the grave to work with all our 
might that which we have to do. It is on my mind that 
our night of sorrow is wellnigh ended, and that the joy 
of our morning is at hand. The breath of the pleasant 
south-west is here, and the singing of birds. The sore 
sickness is stayed ; somewhat more than half our num- 
ber still remain ; and among these some of our best and 
wisest, though others are fallen on sleep. Matter of joy 
and thanksgiving it is, that among you all, the living 
and the dead, I know not one, even when disease had 
touched him, and sharp grief had made his heart as a 
little child's, who desired, yea, who could have been 
entreated, to go back to England by yonder ship. 
Plainly is it God's will that we stand or fall here. All 
His providences these hundred years declare it as with 
beams of the sun. Did He not set His bow in the 



352 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

clouds in that bitterest hour of our embarking, and 
build His glorious ark upon the sea for us to sail 
through hitherward? Wherefore, let us stand in our 
lot ! If He prosper us we shall found a church against 
which the gates of hell shall not prevail ; and a colony, 
yea, a nation, by which all other nations shall be healed. 
Millions shall spring from our loins, and trace back 
with lineal love their blood to ours. Centuries here- 
after, in great cities, the capitals of mighty States, from 
the tribes of a common Israel, shall come together the 
good, the eminent, the beautiful, to remember our 
dark day of small things ; yea, generations shall call us 
blessed !" 

Without a sigh, calmly, with triumph, they sent The 
Mayflower away, and went back, these stern, strong 
men, all, all, to their imperial labors. 

I have said that I deemed it a great thing for a na- 
tion, in all the periods of its fortunes, to be able to look 
back to a race of founders and a principle of institution 
in which it might seem to see the realized idea of true 
heroism. That felicity, that pride, that help, is ours. 
Our past — both its great eras, that of settlement and 
that of independence — should announce, should compel, 
should spontaneously evolve as from a germ, a wise, 
moral, and glorious future. These heroic men and 
women should not look down on a dwindled posterity. 
It should seem to be almost of course, too easy to be 
glorious, that they who keep the graves, bear the name^, 
and boast the blood, of men in whom the loftiest sense 
of duty blended itself with the fiercest spirit of liberty, 
should add to their freedom, justice; justice to all men, 
to all nations; justice, that venerable virtue, without 
which freedom, valor, and power, are but vulgar things. 

And yet is the past nothing, even our past, but as you, 
quickened by its examples, instructed by its experience. 



RUFUS CHOATE 353 

warned by its voices, assisted by its accumulated instru- 
mentality, shall reproduce it in the life of to-day. Its 
once busy existence, various sensations, fiery trials, 
dear-bought triumphs; its dynasty of heroes, all its 
pulses of joy and anguish, and hope and fear, and love 
and praise, are with the years beyond the flood. "The 
sleeping and the dead are but as pictures." Yet, gazing 
on these, long and intently and often, we may pass into 
the likeness of the departed, — may emulate their labors, 
and partake of their immortality. 



RESPONSE 



MR. PRESIDENT :— I have a grateful duty to per- 
form in acknowledging the kindness of the sen- 
timent thus expressed towards me. And yet I must 
say, Gentlemen, that I rise upon this occasion under a 
consciousness that I may probably disappoint highly 
raised, too highly raised expectations. In the scenes 
of this evening, and in the scene of this day, my part is 
an humble one. I can enter into no competition with 
the fresher geniuses of those more eloquent gentlemen, 
learned and reverend, who have addressed this Society. 
I may perform, however, the humbler, but sometimes 
useful, duty of contrast, by adding the dark ground 
of the picture, which shall serve to bring out the more 
brilliant colors. 

I must receive. Gentlemen, the sentiment proposed 
by the worthy and distinguished citizen of New York 
before me, as intended to convey the idea that, as a 
citizen of New England, as a son, a child, a creation of 
New England, I may be yet supposed to entertain, in 
some degree, that enlarged view of my duty as a citi- 
zen of the United States and as a public man, which 
may, in some small measure, commend me to the re- 
gard of the whole country. While I am free to con- 
fess, Gentlemen, that there is no compliment of which 
I am more desirous to be thought worthy, I will add, 
that a compliment of that kind could have proceeded 

354 



DANIEL WEBSTER 355 

from no source more agreeable to my own feelings than 
from the gentleman who has proposed it, — an eminent 
merchant, the member of a body of eminent merchants, 
known throughout the world for their intelligence and 
enterprise. I the more especially feel this, Gentlemen, 
because, whether I view the present state of things or 
recur to the history of the past, I can in neither case be 
ignorant how much that profession, and its distin- 
guished members, from an early day of our history, 
have contributed to make the country what it is, and 
the government what it is. 

Gentlemen, the free nature of our institutions, and 
the popular form of those governments which have 
come down to us from the Rock of Plymouth, give 
scope to intelligence, to talent, enterprise, and public 
spirit, from all classes making up the great body of the 
community. And the country has received benefit in 
all its history and in all its exigencies, of the most emi- 
nent and striking character, from persons of the class 
to which my friend before me belongs. Who will ever 
forget that the first name signed to our ever-memorable 
and ever-glorious Declaration of Independence is the 
name of John Hancock, a merchant of Boston ? Who 
will ever forget that, in the most disastrous days of the 
Revolution, when the treasury of the country was bank- 
rupt, with unpaid navies and starving armies, it was a 
merchant, — Robert Morris of Philadelphia, — who, by 
a noble sacrifice of his own fortune, as well as by the 
exercise of his great financial abilities, sustained and 
supported the wise men of the country in council, and 
the brave men of the country in the field of battle? 
Nor are there wanting more recent instances. I have 
the pleasure to see near me, and near my friend who 
proposed this sentiment, the son of an eminent mer- 
chant of New England (Mr. Goodhue), an early mem- 



356 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ber of the Senate of the United States, always con- 
sulted, always respected, in whatever belonged to the 
duty and the means of putting in operation the finan- 
cial and commercial system of the country; and this 
mention of the father of my friend brings to my mind 
the memory of his great colleague, the early associate 
of Hamilton and of Ames, trusted and beloved by 
Washington, consulted on all occasions connected with 
the administration of the finances, the establishment of 
the treasury department, the imposition of the first 
rates of duty, and with every thing that belonged to 
the commercial system of the United States, — George 
Cabot, of Massachusetts. 

I will take this occasion to say. Gentlemen, that there 
is no truth better developed and established in the his- 
tory of the United States, from the formation of the 
Constitution to the present time, than this, — that the 
mercantile classes, the great commercial masses of the 
country, whose affairs connect them strongly with 
every State in the Union and with all the nations of 
the earth, whose business and profession give a sort of 
nationality to their character, — that no class of men 
among us, from the beginning, have shown a stronger 
and firmer devotion to whatsoever has been designed, 
or to whatever has tended, to preserve the union of 
these States and the stability of the free government 
under which we live. The Constitution of the United 
States, in regard to the various municipal regulations 
and local interests, has left the States individual, dis- 
connected, isolated. It has left them their own codes 
of criminal law; it has left them their own system of 
municipal regulations. But there was one great inter- 
est, one great concern, which, from the very nature of 
the case, was no longer to be left under the regulations 
of the then thirteen, afterwards twenty, and now twen- 



DANIEL WEBSTER 357 

ty-six States, but was committed, necessarily com- 
mitted, to the care, the protection, and the regulation 
of one government ; and this was that great unit, as it 
has been called, the commerce of the United States. 
There is no commerce of New York, no commerce of 
Massachusetts, none of Georgia, none of Alabama or 
Louisiana. All and singular, in the aggregate and in 
all its parts, is the commerce of the United States, regu- 
lated at home by a uniform system of laws under the 
authority of the general government, and protected 
abroad under the flag of our government, the glorious 
E Plurihus Unum, and guarded, if need be, by the 
power of the general government all over the world. 
There is, therefore. Gentlemen, nothing more cement- 
ing, nothing that makes us more cohesive, nothing that 
more repels all tendencies to separation and dismem- 
berment, than this great, this common, I may say this 
overwhelming interest of one commerce, one general 
system of trade and navigation, one everywhere and 
with every nation of the globe. There is no flag of any 
particular American State seen in the Pacific seas, or 
in the Baltic, or in the Indian Ocean. Who knows, 
or who hears, there of your proud State, or of my 
proud State ? Who knows, or who hears, of any thing, 
ajt the extremest north or south, or at the antipodes, — 
in the remotest regions of the Eastern or Western Sea, 
— who ever hears, or knows, of any thing but an Ameri- 
can ship, or of any American enterprise of a commer- 
cial character that does not bear the impression of the 
American Union with it? 

It would be a presumption of which I cannot be 
guilty. Gentlemen, for me to imagine for a moment, 
that, among the gifts which New England has made 
to our common country, I am any thing more than one 
of the most inconsiderable. I readily bring to mind the 



358 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

great men, not only with whom I have met, but those 
of the generation before me, who now sleep with their 
fathers, distinguished in the Revolution, distinguished 
in the formation of the Constitution and in the early- 
administration of the government, always and every- 
where distinguished; and I shrink in just and conscious 
humiliation before their established character and es- 
tablished renown ; and all that I venture to say, and all 
that I venture to hope may be thought true, in the sen- 
timent proposed, is, that, so far as mind and purpose, 
so far as intention and will, are concerned, I may be 
found among those who are capable of embracing the 
whole country of which they are members in a proper, 
comprehensive, and patriotic regard. We all know 
that the objects which are nearest are the objects which 
are dearest ; family affections, neighborhood affections, 
social relations, these in truth are nearest and dearest 
to us all : but whosoever shall be able rightly to adjust 
the graduation of his affections, and to love his friends 
and his neighbors, and his country, as he ought to love 
them, merits the commendation pronounced by the phil- 
osophic poet upon him 

''Qui didicit patriae quid debeat, et quid amicis." 

Gentlemen, it has been my fortune, in the little part 
which I have acted in public life, for good or for evil 
to the community, to be connected entirely with that 
government which, within the limits of constitutional 
power, exercises jurisdiction over all the States and all 
the people. My friend at the end of the table on my 
left has spoken pleasantly to us to-night of the reputed 
miracles of tutelar saints. In a sober sense, in a sense 
of deep conviction, I say that the emergence of this 
country from British domination, and its union under 



DANIEL WEBSTER 359 

its present form of government beneath the general 
Constitution of the coimtr}-, if not a miracle, is, I do 
not say the most, but one of the most fortunate, the 
most admirable, the most auspicious occurrences, which 
have ever fallen to the lot of man. Circumstances 
have wrought out for us a state of things which, 
in other times and other regions, philosophy has 
dreamed of, and theon,- has proposed, and speculation 
has suggested, but which man has never been able to 
accomplish. I mean the government of a great nation 
over a %-astly extended portion of the surface of the 
earth, hy yneans of local instifiitiofis for local purposes, 
and general institutions for general purposes. I know 
of nothing in the history of the world, notwithstanding 
the great league of Grecian states, notwithstanding the 
success of the Roman system, (and certainly there is 
no exception to the remark in modem histon,-,) — I 
know of nothing so suitable on the whole for the great 
interests of a great people spread over a large portion 
of the globe, as the provision of local legislation for 
local and municipal purposes, with, not a confederacy, 
nor a loose binding together of separate parts, but a 
limited, positive general government for positive gen- 
eral purposes, over the whole. We may derive emi- 
nent proofs of this truth from the past and the present. 
^\'hat see we to-day in the agitations on the other side 
of the Atlantic? I speak of them, of course without 
expressing any opinion on questions of politics in a 
foreign coimtry; but I speak of them as an occurrence 
which shows the great expediency, the utilit}', I may 
say the necessity', of local legislation. If, in a country 
on the other side of the water (Ireland), there be some 
who desire a severance of one part of the empire from 
another, under a proposition of repeal, there are others 
who propose a continuance of the existing relation 



36o NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

under a federative system : and what is this ? No 
more, and no less, than an approximation to that sys- 
tem under which we live, which for local, municipal 
purposes shall have a local legislature, and for general 
purposes a general legislature. 

This becomes the more important when we consider 
that the United States stretch over so many degrees of 
latitude, — that they embrace such a variety of climate, 
— that various conditions and relations of society natu- 
rally call for different laws and regulations. Let me 
ask whether the legislature of New York could wisely 
pass laws for the government of Louisiana, or whether 
the legislature of Louisiana could wisely pass laws for 
Pennsylvania or New York? Every body will say, 
"No." And yet the interests of New York and Penn- 
sylvania and Louisiana, in whatever concerns their re- 
lations between themselves and their general relations 
with all the states of the world, are found to be per- 
fectly well provided for, and adjusted with perfect 
congruity, by committing these general interests to one 
common government, the result of popular general elec- 
tions among them all. 

I confess. Gentlemen, that having been, as I have 
said, in my humble career in public life, employed in 
that portion of the public service which is connected 
with the general government, I have contemplated, as 
the great object of every proceeding, not only the par- 
ticular benefit of the moment, or the exigency of the 
occasion, but the preservation of this system ; for I do 
consider it so much the result of circumstances, and 
that so much of it is due to fortunate concurrence, as 
well as to the sagacity of the great men acting upon 
those occasions, — that it is an experiment of such re- 
markable and renowned success, — that he is a fool or 
a madman who would wish to try that experiment a 
second time. I see to-day, and we all see, that the de- 



DANIEL WEBSTER 361 

scendants of the Puritans who landed upon the Rock 
of Plymouth; the followers of Raleigh, who settled 
Virginia and North Carolina; he who lives where the 
truncheon of empire, so to speak, was borne by Smith ; 
the inhabitants of Georgia; he who settled under the 
auspices of France at the mouth of the Mississippi ; the 
Swede on the Delaware, the Quaker of Pennsylvania, — 
all find, at this day, their common interest, their com- 
mon protection, their common glory, under the united 
government, which leaves them all, nevertheless, in the 
administration of their own municipal and local affairs, 
to be Frenchmen, or Swedes, or Quakers, or whatever 
they choose. And when one considers that this sys- 
tem of government, I will not say has produced, be- 
cause God and nature and circumstances have had an 
agency in it, — but when it is considered that this sys- 
tem has not prevented, but has rather encouraged, the 
growth of the people of this country from three mil- 
lions, on the glorious 4th of July, 1776, to seventeen 
millions now, who is there that will say, upon this hemi- 
sphere, — nay, who is there that will stand up in any 
hemisphere, who is there in any part of the world, that 
will say that the great experiment of a united republic 
has failed in America? And yet I know. Gentlemen, 
I feel, that this united system is held together by strong 
tendencies to union, at the same time that it is kept 
from too much leaning toward consolidation by a 
strong tendency in the several States to support each its 
own power and consideration. In the physical world 
it is said, that 

"All nature's difference keeps all nature's peace," 

and there is in the political world this same harmonious 
difference, this regular play of the positive and nega- 
tive powers (if I may so say), which, at least for one 



362 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

glorious half-century, has kept us as we have been kept, 
and made us what we are. 

But, Gentlemen, I must not allow myself to pursue 
this topic. It is a sentiment so commonly repeated by 
me upon all public occasions, and upon all private occa- 
sions, and everywhere, that I forbear to dwell upon it 
now. It is the union of these States, it is the system 
of government under which we live, beneath the Con- 
stitution of the United States, happily framed, wisely 
adopted, successfully administered for fifty years, — it 
is mainly this, I say, that gives us power at home and 
credit abroad. And, for one, I never stop to consider 
the power or wealth or greatness of a State. I tell 
you, Mr. Chairman, I care nothing for your Empire 
State as such. Delaware and Rhode Island are as high 
in my regard as New York. In population, in power, 
in the government over us, you have a greater share. 
You would have the same share if you were divided 
into forty States. It is not, therefore, as a State sov- 
ereignty, it is only because New York is a vast portion 
of the whole American people, that I regard this State, 
as I always shall regard her, as respectable and honor- 
able. But among State sovereignties there is no pref- 
erence; there is nothing high and nothing low; every 
State is independent and every State is equal. If we 
depart from this great principle, then we are no longer 
one people; but we are thrown back again upon the 
Confederation, and upon that state of things in which 
the inequality of the States produced all the evils which 
befell us in times past, and a thousand ill-adjusted and 
jarring interests. 

Mr. President, I wish, then, without pursuing these 
thoughts, without especially attempting to produce any 
fervid impression by dwelling upon them, to take this 
occasion to answer my friend who has proposed the 



DANIEL WEBSTER 363 

sentiment, and to respond to it by saying, that who- 
ever would serve his country in this our day, with 
whatever degree of talent, great or small, it may have 
pleased the Almighty Power to give him, he cannot 
serve it, he will not serve it, unless he be able, at least, 
to extend his political designs, purposes, and objects, 
till they shall comprehend the whole country of which 
he is a servant. 

Sir, I must say a word in connection with that event 
which we have assembled to commemorate. It has 
seemed fit to the dwellers in New York, New-Eng- 
landers by birth or descent, to form this society. They 
have formed it for the relief of the poor and distressed, 
and for the purpose of commemorating annually the 
great event of the settlement of the country from which 
they spring. It would be great presumption in me to 
go back to the scene of that settlement, or to attempt 
to exhibit it in any colors, after the exhibition made 
to-day; yet it is an event that in all time since, and 
in all time to come, and more in times to come than 
in times past, must stand out in great and striking 
characteristics to the admiration of the world. The 
sun's return to his winter solstice, in 1620, is the epoch 
from which he dates his first acquaintance with the 
small people, now one of the happiest, and destined to 
be one of the greatest, that his rays fall upon ; and his 
annual visitation, from that day to this, to our frozen 
region, has enabled him to see that progress, progress, 
was the characteristic of that small people. He has 
seen them from a handful, that one of his beams com- 
ing through a key-hole might illuminate, spread over a 
hemisphere, which he cannot enlighten under the slight- 
est eclipse. Nor, though this globe should revolve 
around him for tens of hundreds of thousands of years, 
will he see such another incipient colonization upon any 



364 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

part of this attendant upon his mighty orb. What 
else he may see in those other planets which revolve 
around him we cannot tell, at least until we have tried 
the fifty-foot telescope which Lord Rosse is preparing 
for that purpose. 

There is not, Gentlemen, and we may as well admit 
it, in any history of the past, another epoch from which 
so many great events have taken a turn ; events which, 
while important to us, are equally important to the 
country from whence we came. The settlement of 
Plymouth — concurring, I always wish to be under- 
stood, with that of Virginia — was the settlement of 
New England by colonies of Old England. Now, 
Gentlemen, take these two ideas and run out the 
thoughts suggested by both. What has been, and what 
is to be. Old England? What has been, what is, and 
what may be, in the providence of God, Nezv England, 
with her neighbors and associates? I would not dwell, 
Gentlemen, with any particular emphasis upon the sen- 
timent, which I nevertheless entertain, with respect to 
the great diversity in the races of men. I do not know 
how far in that respect I might not encroach on those 
mysteries of Providence which, while I adore, I may 
not comprehend ; but it does seem to me to be very re- 
markable, that we may go back to the time when New 
England, or those who founded it, were subtracted 
from Old England; and both Old England and New 
England went on, nevertheless, in their mighty career 
of progress and power. 

Let me begin with New England for a moment. 
What has resulted, embracing, as I say, the nearly con- 
temporaneous settlement of Virginia, — what has re- 
sulted from the planting upon this continent of two or 
three slender colonies from the mother country? Gen- 
tlemen, the great epitaph commemorative of the char- 



DANIEL WEBSTER 365 

acter and the worth, the discoveries and glory, of Co- 
lumbus, was, that he had given a nezv world to the 
crowns of Castile and Aragon. Gentlemen, this is a 
great mistake. It does not come up at all to the great 
merits of Columbus. He gave the territory of the 
southern hemisphere to the crowns of Castile and Ara- 
gon ; but as a place for the plantation of colonies, as a 
place for the habitation of men, as a place to which 
laws and religion, and manners and science, were to be 
transferred, as a place in which the creatures of God 
should multiply and fill the earth, under friendly skies 
and with religious hearts, he gave it to the whole world, 
he gave it to universal man ! From this seminal prin- 
ciple, and from a handful, a hundred saints, blessed of 
God and ever honored of men, landed on the shores of 
Plymouth and elsewhere along the coast, united, as I 
have said already more than once, in the process of 
time, with the settlement at Jamestown, has sprung this 
great people of which we are a portion. 

I do not reckon myself among quite the oldest of the 
land, and yet it so happens that very recently I re- 
curred to an exulting speech or oration of my own, in 
which I spoke of my country as consisting of nine mil- 
lions of people. I could hardly persuade myself that 
within the short time which had elapsed since that 
epoch our population had doubled ; and that at the pres- 
ent moment there does exist most unquestionably as 
great a probability of its continued progress, in the 
same ratio, as has ever existed in any previous time. I 
do not know whose imagination is fertile enough, I do 
not know whose conjectures, I may almost say, are wild 
enough to tell what may be the progress of wealth and 
population in the United States in half a century to 
come. All we know is, here is a people of from sev- 
enteen to twenty millions, intelligent, educated, free- 



366 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

holders, freemen, republicans, possessed of all the 
means of modern improvement, modern science, arts, 
literature, with the world before them ! There is noth- 
ing to check them till they touch the shores of the Pa- 
cific, and then, they are so much accustomed to water, 
that that 's a facility, and no obstruction ! 

So much. Gentlemen, for this branch of the English 
race; but what has happened, meanwhile, to England 
herself since the period of the departure of the Puritans 
from the coast of Lincolnshire, from the English Bos- 
ton? Gentlemen, in speaking of the progress of Eng- 
lish power, of English dominion and authority, from 
that period to the present, I shall be understood, of 
course, as neither entering into any defence or any 
accusation of the policy which has conducted her to 
her present state. As to the justice of her wars, the 
necessity of her conquests, the propriety of those acts 
by which she has taken possession of so great a por- 
tion of the globe, it is not the business of the present 
occasion to inquire. Ncque teneo, neque refello. But 
I speak of them, or intend to speak of them, as facts of 
the most extraordinary character, unequalled in the 
history of any nation on the globe, and the conse- 
quences of which may and must reach through a thou- 
sand generations. The Puritans left England in the 
reign of James the First. England herself had then 
become somewhat settled and established in the Protes- 
tant faith, and in the quiet enjoyment of property, by 
the previous energetic, long, and prosperous reign of 
Elizabeth. Her successor was James the Sixth of 
Scotland, now become James the First of England; 
and here was a union of the crowns, but not of the 
kingdoms, — a very important distinction. Ireland was 
held by a military power, and one cannot but see that 
at that day, whatever may be true or untrue in more 



DANIEL WEBSTER 367 

recent periods of her history, Ireland was held by Eng- 
land by the two great potencies, the power of the sword 
and the power of confiscation. In other respects, Eng- 
land was nothing like the England which we now be- 
hold. Her foreign possessions were quite inconsider- 
able. She had some hold on the West India Islands; 
she had Acadia, or Nova Scotia, which King James 
granted, by wholesale, for the endowment of the knights 
whom he created by hundreds. And what has been her 
progress? Did she then possess Gibraltar, the key to 
the Mediterranean? Did she possess a port in the 
Mediterranean? Was Malta hers? Were the Ionian 
Islands hers? Was the southern extremity of Africa, 
was the Cape of Good Hope, hers? Were the whole 
of her vast possessions in India hers ? Was her great 
Australian empire hers? While that branch of her 
population which followed the western star, and under 
its guidance committed itself to the duty of settling, 
fertilizing, and peopling an unknown wilderness in the 
West, were pursuing their destinies, other causes, prov- 
idential doubtless, were leading English power east- 
ward and southward, in consequence and by means of 
her naval prowess, and the extent of her commerce, 
until in our day we have seen that within the Mediter- 
ranean, on the western coast and at the southern ex- 
tremity of Africa, in Arabia, in hither India and far- 
ther India, she has a population ten times as great as 
that of the British Isles two centuries ago. And re- 
cently, as we have witnessed, — I will not say with how 
much truth and justice, policy or impolicy, I do not 
speak at all to the morality of the action, 1 only speak 
to the fact, — she has found admission into China, and 
has carried the Christian religion and the Protestant 
faith to the doors of three hundred millions of people. 
It has been said that whosoever would see the East- 



368 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ern world before it turns into a Western world must 
make his visit soon, because steamboats and omnibuses, 
commerce, and all the arts of Europe, are extending 
themselves from Egypt to Suez, from Suez to the In- 
dian seas, and from the Indian seas all over the ex- 
plored regions of the still farther East. 

Now, Gentlemen, I do not know what practical views 
or what practical results may take place from this great 
expansion of the power of the two branches of Old 
England. It is not for me to say. I only can see, that 
on this continent all is to be Anglo-American from 
Plymouth Rock to the Pacific seas, from the north pole 
to California. That is certain; and in the Eastern 
world, I only see that you can hardly place a finger on 
a map of the world and be an inch from an English 
settlement. 

Gentlemen, if there be any thing in the supremacy of 
races, the experiment now in progress will develop it. 
If there be any truth in the idea, that those who issued 
from the great Caucasian fountain, and spread over 
Europe, are to react on India and on Asia, and to act 
on the whole Western world, it may not be for us, nor 
our children, nor our grandchildren to see it, but it 
will be for our descendants of some generation to see 
the extent of that progress and dominion of the fa- 
vored races. 

For myself, I believe there is no limit fit to be as- 
signed to it by the human mind, because I find at work 
everywhere, on both sides of the Atlantic, under vari- 
ous forms and degrees of restriction on the one hand, 
and under various degrees of motive and stimulus 
on the other hand, in these branches of a common 
race, the great principle of the freedom of human 
thought, and the respectability of individual charac- 
ter. I find everywhere an elevation of the charac- 



DANIEL WEBSTER 369 

ter of man as man, an elevation of the individual as 
a component part of society. I find everywhere a re- 
buke of the idea, that the many are made for the few, 
or that government is any thing but an agency for 
mankind. And I care not beneath what zone, frozen, 
temperate, or torrid; I care not of what complexion, 
white or brown; I care not under what circumstances 
of climate or cultivation, if I can find a race of men on 
an inhabitable spot of earth whose general sentiment it 
is, and whose general feeling it is, that government is 
made for man — man, as a religious, moral, and social 
being — and not man for government, there I know that 
I shall find prosperity and happiness. 

Gentlemen, I forbear from these remarks. I recur 
with pleasure to the sentiment which I expressed at tlie 
commencement of my observations. I repeat the grati- 
fication which I feel at having been referred to on this 
occasion by a distinguished member of the mercantile 
profession; and without detaining you further, I beg 
to offer as a sentiment, — 

^^The mercantile interest of the United States, always 
and everywhere friendly to a united and free gov- 
erimient." 

[Mr. Webster sat down amid loud and repeated ap- 
plause; and immediately after, at the request of the 
President, rose and said : — ] 

Gentlemen, I have the permission of the President to 
call your attention to the circumstance that a distin- 
guished foreigner is at the table to-night, Mr. Aldham ; 
a gentleman, I am happy to say, of my own hard-work- 
ing profession, and a member of the English Parlia- 
ment from the great city of Leeds. A traveller in the 
United States, in the most unostentatious manner, he 



370 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

has done us the honor, at the request of the Society, 
to be present to-night. I rise, Gentlemen, to propose 
his health. He is of that Old England of which I 
have been speaking; of that Old England with whom 
we had some fifty years ago rather a serious family 
quarrel, — terminated in a manner, I believe, not par- 
ticularly disadvantageous to either of us. He will find 
in this, his first visit to our country, many things to 
remind him of his own home, and the pursuits in which 
he is engaged in that home. If he will go into our 
courts of law, he will find those who practise there re- 
ferring to the same books of authority, acknowledging 
the same principles, discussing the same subjects, 
which he left under discussion in Westminster Hall. 
If he go into our public assemblies, he will find the 
same rules of procedure — possibly not always quite as 
regularly observed — as he left behind him in that house 
of Parliament of which he is a member. At any rate, 
he will find us a branch of that great family to which he 
himself belongs, and I doubt not that, in his sojourn 
among us, in the acquaintances he may form, the no- 
tions he may naturally imbibe, he will go home to his 
own country somewhat better satisfied with what he 
has seen and learned on this side of the Atlantic, and 
somewhat more convinced of the great importance to 
both countries of preserving the peace that at present 
subsists between them. I propose to you, Gentlemen, 
the health of ]\Ir. Aldham. 



"IQMEN 'EIS 'A0HNAS 

ADDRESS 

GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 
1844 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 
(1801-1881.) 

Mr. Marsh had just entered Congress from Vermont when 
asked to speak before the New England Society. He was a 
graduate of Dartmouth, and well known as a lecturer on the 
English language and literature and as the author of the scien- 
tific work, "The Earth as Modified by Human Action." Under 
President Taylor he had been minister to Turkey, and under 
President Lincoln he was appointed minister to Italy, in which 
post he served with honor twenty-one years. The anniversary 
address, delivered at the Tabernacle in 1844, is one of the best 
given before the society; but his vigorous praise of the Puri- 
tans and his grave warning to their descendants called forth re- 
monstrances from friends as well as strangers. To appreciate 
the force of his words it must be remembered that they were 
written when the Puseyite movement in England was high in 
the ascendant, and when the battle seemed spreading to the 
American shore, bringing with it results unfortunate alike to 
Dissenter and Churchman. 



ADDRESS 

WHILE New England was yet united to our parent 
land, by ties of colonial dependence and golden 
links of filial affection, which the harsh alchemy of 
trans-atl antic oppression was fast transmuting to fet- 
ters of iron, our fathers were V\^ont to speak of a voyage 
to England as a visit to their home. The mother coun- 
try, unnatural as she had proved, was still regarded as 
the proper home even of those of her children, whom 
the unsparing rancour of priestly tyranny and religious 
hate had forced to seek a new abode in an unknown 
wilderness, and to exchange the domestic cruelties of 
the parent, for the hospitalities of the stranger and the 
tender mercies of the savage. 

But the outcast colony has become herself a metropo- 
lis, and in turn sent forth swarms, whom no political 
severance, no memory of unmaternal wrongs, yet for- 
bids to call her. Mother. To her scattered and unde- 
generate sons, New England is still the patriarchal tab- 
ernacle, and on this day, when the hearts of all her 
children are turned to that magnetic rock, I am here to 
invite you to re-visit your primeval home. Let us, then, 
on this her natal day, renew our homage to our vener- 
able mother, kindle anew the fires of our patriotism 
by recurring to the memories of her youth, and animate 
and refresh our spirits by reverently listening to the 
counsels of her maturer age. 

373 



374 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

The home to which I invite you is not our material 
birthplace, nor shall I aim to touch your sympathies, by 
picturing to your fancy the scenes of your childhood, 
the sea, the mountain, the plain, or the river, which 
frowned or smiled on the mansions of your fathers, or 
the cottages of your widowed mothers, by reminding 
you of the elm that bent over your cradle, and the pines 
that sighed by the graves of your kindred, or by de- 
scribing our aguish climate, with its alternations of 
chill and fever, where the fervid heat of a brief and 
fitful summer serves but to make more sensible the cold 
of a long and rigorous winter. Neither will I dwell on 
the institutions of our native land, the district free 
school, the humble church and its simple worship, the 
silence of the unbroken Sabbath, the free election, the 
equal rights and equal level of all her people ; for these, 
even more than the local features, the soil and the cli- 
mate, the hill and the valley, the streamlet and the ocean, 
characterize the material being of New England; but 
it is to the fundamental principles on which these insti- 
tutions rest, and the inbred traits of character which 
mark us as a people, that I shall call your attention, and, 
so far as the brief hour, to which I am limited by the 
proprieties of the occasion, will permit, I shall develop 
those principles, and refer those characteristic traits 
to the external influences, which have implanted or 
strengthened them. 

But I may well invite to accompany us, on this 
Thanksgiving visit, not the descendants of the Pilgrims 
alone, but all who share their principles, and especially 
those brothers of the same blood, twin scions of the an- 
cient Gothic stock, with whom you are now domicili- 
ated, and whose ancestors, after having themselves 
nobly fought and triumphed in the same glorious strug- 
gle against the crown and the mitre, received and 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 375 

cheered with kindly sympathies your exiled forefathers, 
as they rested on their way, to gather strength for the 
long and hazardous pilgrimage that lay before them. 

Nor do I address myself alone to the Christian phi- 
losopher, who knows that the integrity of his religion 
depends upon the cardinal doctrine of the Puritan faith, 
the recognition of both the authority and the sufficiency 
of the revealed and unsophisticated word of God; to 
the statesman, who is able to perceive the indissoluble 
connection between his country's weal and her adher- 
ence to those principles of civil and ecclesiastical polity 
which New Testament Christianity sanctions; to the 
merchant-prince, who is conscious that he owes to Puri- 
tan impulses those enterprising energies, of which his 
well-earned gains are the just and appropriate reward; 
to him who boasts a nobler genealogy than that of a 
Howard, because he bears a name that is subscribed 
to the covenant sealed in the Mayflower's cabin ; but also 
to the humble and hopeful youth, who, having been 
bred in penury and ignorance, can hope to be emanci- 
pated from those shackles, only by the favor of such 
institutions as our ancestors have founded, and who 
cherishes that decent pride, which impels him to rely on 
his own energies, to despise the vanity of birth, and to 
thank God, that the current of his veins is tainted by 
no drop of royal or of noble blood. 

In discussing the only subject appropriate to the oc- 
casion, it is not my aim to pamper or excite a feeling of 
sectional and disdainful pride, in the descendants of 
those to whom the cause of civil and religious liberty 
is so deeply indebted, but to awaken in you a convic- 
tion, that your virtues and your liberties can be main- 
tained inviolate, only by a steady adherence to the 
grounds upon which they are founded, and in these 
days of evil omen, when the principles of your fathers 



376 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

are every where spoken against, and the fierce strifes of 
contending factions, and the lust of temporal and eccle- 
siastical dominion, are threatening to rend the very- 
framework of our social fabric, to rouse to action some 
of those heroic spirits, whose glory it is to deserve well 
of their country, by hoping, when other good men see 
cause only of despair. 

There is a theory which teaches, both as a fact of 
observation, and as an universal law of nature, that all 
things into whose constitution material substance en- 
ters, whether they be animate or inanimate, organized 
or inorganic, individual or aggregate, have their neces- 
sary periods of inception, growth, maturity and decay. 
This general law, in its application to organic, or at 
least to animal life, seems to be necessary, and death is 
implied in the very idea of animated being; but with 
regard to inorganic things, though inexorable, it is but 
accidental. In the inorganic creation, origin, change 
and dissolution alike are brought about by the agency 
of external material causes, working in conjunction 
with the laws of spontaneous chemical action. Gravity, 
attraction and other mechanical forces bring into juxta- 
position substances indued with various affinities, and 
the chemistry of inanimate nature combines them into 
forms, which, preserved against all forces but the par- 
ticular attractions and cohesions by which they are 
built up, would continue without aliment or change, 
increase or diminution, and be as permanent as the 
immutable laws, which give them being. A stone or a 
metal, protected against the action of air, heat, mois- 
ture, and external mechanical forces, would be as dur- 
able as time itself. But such protection is impossible, 
for nature insulates nothing, and suffers none of her 
works to be permanently withdrawn from the sphere of 
any of her influences. The solid rock is rent by the 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 177 

earthquake, shivered by frost, and wasted by the drop- 
ping rain; the hard metal is oxydised by the invisible 
moisture suspended in the clear atmosphere, and both 
are reduced from masses to fragments, from fragments 
to particles, and at last, perhaps, resolved into imper- 
ceptible gases. Beings possessed of organic life, on the 
other hand, though requiring the voluntary or fortui- 
tous concurrence of external causes for birth, depen- 
dent on them for aliment and growth, and exposed to 
premature destruction or decay from their action, do 
nevertheless truly owe their conception, maturity and 
perfection, to an internal and superior vital law, not a 
mere dead force of affinity, attraction and repulsion, but 
a law of germination, development, assimilation and 
progress. But, unlike the chemical law, which tends 
to preserve the inorganic forms constructed by its en- 
ergies, this law of life pronounces judgement of death 
on its offspring, and becomes the executioner of its own 
inevitable sentence. Organic life requires aliment and 
continued assimilation. For lack of aliment it per- 
ishes, but the food that supplies its nutrient juices brings 
with it the seeds of death. The very vital processes 
tend, in their continued action, to the destruction of the 
fabric they have reared. The constructive powers, 
which build up our material frames, acting in strict 
accordance with their own law, even under circum- 
stances most favorable to the permanence of their 
works, by new elaboration, secretion and assimilation, 
clog up the ducts and cells, ossify the valves, make rigid 
the joints and flexures, and end by stopping and sur- 
rendering to the influence of the chemical forces, whose 
action organic life had suspended, or rather controlled, 
the machine themselves had created. Death from natu- 
ral decay is the consequence, not of the exhaustion of 
the vital powers, but of their continued action, for life. 



378 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

even as a destroyer, is always constructive. Thus the 
vital principle is itself suicidal. From conception to 
maturity, it is creative; but that point once passed, the 
Genius of Life inverts his torch, and becomes the Angel 
of Death. Saturn devours his children, and the various 
energies, to which animate forms owe their material 
being, work on, until, by conflicting action, they neu- 
tralize each other, and destroy their product. 

According to the dark forebodings of this awful the- 
ory, even the great globe itself is subject to this same 
universal law, and has its periods of mutation and catas- 
trophe, all tending to prepare it for final dissolution. 
Nay, its very occupancy by organized beings renders it 
incapable of permanent enjoyment, by successive gener- 
ations of similar or allied orders of existences. Every 
breath forever unfits for respiration a portion of the 
circumambient atmosphere, and the equilibrium of its 
constituent gases is perpetually disturbed by vegetable 
exhalation. Every particle of matter, that has once 
entered into the constitution, or served the uses of a 
living being, becomes thereby less suitable for future or- 
ganic combination. The return to earth's bosom of the 
mouldering form of each of her children irrecoverably 
taints a portion of her soil with a poison destructive to 
similar organic life. The action of sun and wind, frost 
and rain, is degrading continents, and the explosive 
power of volcanic forces is upheaving the bottom of 
oceans. Thus the relative proportions of land and 
water are deranged, terrestrial climates become too hot, 
too cold, too moist or too dry, for the present tribes of 
organized nature, and earth is continually growing un- 
fit for the habitation of the living beings that animate 
her surface. All these, then, shall perish, — the fiowers 
of the mead, the grasses of the plain, the leafy giants 
of the forest, the creeping worm and the buzzing fly, 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 379 

the inhabitant of the waters, the fowl of the air, the 
beast of the field, man himself, who lords it over all, — 
and Earth is desolate. But she shall be re-peopled, 
again and again, by new creations of living beings, 
with forms, organs, and faculties suited to a new atmo- 
sphere, and a new configuration and consistence of sur- 
face. Thus change shall succeed change, until the 
combined action of vital and inorganic chemistry shall 
bring into conflict such mighty hostile energies, that 
earth's solid frame shall sink in the collision, the ele- 
ments shall melt with fervent heat, the rocks become 
fluid, the waters evaporate, the heavens, the atmosphere, 
the subtle medium of light, shall pass away like a scroll, 
and the place now filled by this gladsome, busy world 
of life and energy and light, shall be a motionless, dark, 
and noiseless void. 

It is said, too, that man, in his social capacity, is sub- 
ject to a similar law. The life of an individual is an 
epitome of the history of a state. A nation first strug- 
gles into existence, as a colony or dependent province: 
then, fostered by care, or more probably favored by neg- 
lect, it gradually acquires strength, maturity, indepen- 
dence and power : then, after a few generations or cen- 
turies of glory and greatness, enervated by luxury, 
weakened by private and oflicial corruption, and divided 
by faction, it falls an easy prey to domestic usurpation 
or foreign aggression, is impoverished by tyranny, or 
plundered by conquest, and, by incorporation or parti- 
tion, loses its political individuality, and has no longer 
a place in the catalogue of independent sovereignties. 

That such has been the general fate of empire, his- 
tory abundantly shows. The glories of Grecian civili- 
zation, where the human intellect achieved its highest 
and most diversified triumphs, have been succeeded by 
the barbaric pride of the sensual Turk, and the iron 



380 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

sway of heartless Rome, by the spiritual despotism of 
the unreasoning monk. The mephitic breath of Ahri- 
man has quenched the eternal fires of old Persepolis, 
and the Simoom has blasted the flowery splendor of 
imperial Bagdad. Typhon's cloud broods over Thebes 
and Memphis. The history of Egypt is studied in her 
sepulchres, and the Etruscan races of primeval Italy are 
only known by the gorgeous furniture of their funerals. 
It is a question of grave and even fearful import, 
whether there is, in the constitution of modern civil 
society, any conservative element, which promises per- 
manent duration to existing forms of social organiza- 
tion, any prophylactic against the corruptions of war 
and the cankers of peace, any mithridate against the 
insinuating and seductive poison of alien and anti-na- 
tional influences, any corrective for that love of novelty 
and change, which leads men so readily to abandon the 
old and well approved truth, and its fruit, the venerable 
civil or religious institution, for the plausible, but un- 
certain theory, and the specious and hollow show of 
reform in church or state; or whether, on the other 
hand, it is the inexorable decree of the Creator, that 
nations, as well as individuals, shall have their ages ' 
of infancy and growth, their moment of full maturity, 
and their period of sudden convulsion, chronic disease 
and decline, or senile decay. 

May we hope to find, in the invention of printing, 
the progress of science and the mechanic arts, the more 
intimate relations of international commerce and gov- 
ernment, the extension of the principle of associate ac- 
tion, combined with equality of individual powers and 
duties, the increased respect for the rights of man, and 
their more general recognition by hereditary rulers, the 
growing reverence for law, and the consequent repug- 
nance to war — the negation of all law, the wider diffu- 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 381 

sion of scientific, political and religious knowledge, or 
the dissemination of sounder views of Christianity, any 
barrier against the possible encroachments of unchris- 
tianized barbarism, the love of conquest and spoil 
among the powers of Christendom, and the internal cor- 
ruptions, which lead to dissension, rebellion, and revo- 
lution ; or are we bound to believe, that the fortunes of 
the future will be but a repetition of the history of the 
past, that the Christian world will again and again be 
seared with fire and drenched in blood, that it will still 
be a theatre, whose shifting scenes shall exhibit per- 
petual change, the alternate supremacy of might and 
right, now force and arbitrary will victorious over law 
and reason, now the brief triumph of virtue over pas- 
sion, resistance to lawful authority on the one hand, on 
the other, usurpation and contempt of human rights? 
Are law and anarchy, tyranny and freedom, like the 
good and evil principles of the Manichaean system, to 
wage perpetual war, or shall the reason of state at 
length achieve a final victory over the rebellious pas- 
sions of social man? 

These great questions, indeed, admit of no prospec- 
tive solution, and it would be but an idle speculation to 
attempt to raise the veil with which an inscrutable Prov- 
idence conceals the distant future, or even to seek to 
resolve the narrower problem, whether, as some wise 
men have believed, our particular Anglo-Saxon civiliza- 
tion is nearing its zenith, and, at some not distant epoch 
of the earth's great year, destined to give place to other 
forms of social life. But there are questions, concern- 
ing the present hopes and probable fate of those insti- 
tutions in which we of New England have been nur- 
tured, that demand our attention, because they involve 
matters of conscientious duty and immediate interest. 

In order well and wisely to discharge the duty which 



382 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

every free man owes to the land of his birth, it is indis- 
pensable that he know the true nature of her institu- 
tions, and comprehend how they have been shaped and 
modified by the predominant traits of national char- 
acter: for free governments are never the result of 
accident, but always derive their original from the intel- 
ligent exercise of the national will, and, in their struc- 
ture, conform to the genius of the people. 

Upon every homogeneous nation. Providence im- 
presses distinctive moral and intellectual traits, through 
the agency of natural causes, and of these, the influence 
of climate, soil, and the configuration of the earth's sur- 
face, is the most active and conspicuous. — To such in- 
fluences, the great race, from which we are remotely de- 
rived, owes its most striking characteristics, and the 
same traits, though modified by the enjoyment of Al- 
bion's milder sky and more genial soil, for a period of 
ten centuries, were roused into distinct prominence in 
our immediate ancestors, by moral causes, and have 
recovered their original sharpness and consistence in us, 
their descendants, by our transfer to a harsher climate, 
a ruder landscape, and a more unthankful glebe. 

What, then, are the fundamental traits of our heredi- 
tary character, and how have they been formed by the 
action of the influences around us? The word home, 
which I have so often used, and which is peculiar to our 
ancient tongue and its cognate dialects, suggests the 
most pregnant traits in the character of the ancestry 
from whom we sprang, and these traits, with their prog- 
eny of social virtues and intellectual excellences, are 
more unequivocally traceable than almost any other to 
the influence of climate. Both the word and the feel- 
ings which are clustered around it, in their strength and 
their tenderness, are the very "badge of our tribe," and 
it is well that a wise Providence has compensated, by a 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 383 

daring and restless spirit of enterprise, an impulse, 
whose excess might detract from the energy, which the 
necessity of a never-ending struggle with the elements 
imperiously requires in the sons of the frigid and frugal 
North. 

In the sunny climes of Southern Europe, where a 
sultry and relaxing day is followed by a balmy and 
refreshing night, and but a brief period intervenes be- 
tween the fruits of Autumn and the renewed promises 
of Spring, life, both social and industrial, is chiefly 
passed beneath the open canopy of heaven. The bright- 
est hours of the livelong day are dragged in drowsy, 
listless toil, or indolent repose; but the evening breeze 
invigorates the fainting frame, rouses the flagging 
spirit, and calls to dance and revelry, and song, beneath 
a brilliant moon or a starlit sky. No necessity exists 
for those household comforts, which are indispensa- 
ble to the inhabitant of colder zones, and the charms 
of domestic life are scarcely known in their perfect 
growth. But in the frozen North, for a large portion 
of the year, the pale and feeble rays of a clouded sun 
but partially dispel, for a few short hours, the chills 
and shades of a lingering dawn, and an early and te- 
dious night. Snows impede the closing labors of har- 
vest, and stiffening frosts aggravate the fatigues of the 
wayfarer, and the toils of the forest. Repose, society 
and occupation alike, must, therefore, be sought at the 
domestic hearth. Secure from the tempest that howls 
without, the father and the brother here rest from their 
weary tasks ; here the family circle is gathered around 
the evening meal, and lighter labor, cheered, not inter- 
rupted, by social intercourse, is resumed, and often pro- 
tracted, till, like the student's vigils, it almost "outwatch 
the Bear." Here the child grows up under the ever 
watchful eye of the parent, in the first and best of 



384 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

schools, where lisping infancy is taught the rudiments 
of sacred and profane knowledge, and the older pupil is 
encouraged to con over by the evening taper, the lessons 
of the day, and seek from the father or a more ad- 
vanced brother, a solution of the problems, which ju- 
venile industry has found too hard to master. The 
members of the domestic circle are thus brought into 
closer contact; parental authority assumes the gentler 
form of persuasive influence, and filial submission is 
elevated to affectionate and respectful observance. The 
necessity of mutual aid and forbearance, and the per- 
petual interchange of good offices, generate the tender- 
est kindliness of feeling, and a lasting warmth of at- 
tachment to home and its inmates, throughout the 
patriarchal circle. 

Among the most important fruits of this domesticity 
of life, are the better appreciation of the worth of the 
female character, woman's higher rank as an object, 
not of passion, but of reverence, and the reciprocal 
moral influence which the two sexes exercise over each 
other. They are brought into close communion, under 
circumstances most favorable to preserve the purity of 
woman, and the decorum of man, and the character of 
each is modified, and its excesses restrained, by the ex- 
ample of the other. Man's rude energies are softened 
into something of the ready sympathy and dexterous 
helpfulness of woman, and woman, as she learns to 
prize and to reverence the independence, the heroic firm- 
ness, the patriotism of man, acquires and appropriates 
some tinge of his peculiar virtues. Such were the in- 
fluences which formed the heart of the brave, good 
daughter of apostolic John Knox, who bearded that 
truculent pedant, James I., and told him she would 
rather receive her husband's head in her lap, as it fell 
from the headsman's axe, than to consent that he should 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 385 

purchase his hfe by apostasy from the rehgion he had 
preached, and the God he had worshipped. To the 
same noble school belonged that goodly company of the 
Mothers of New England, who shrank neither from the 
dangers of the tempestuous sea, nor the hardships and 
sorrows of that first awful winter, but were ever at 
man's side, encouraging, aiding, consoling, in every 
peril, every trial, every grief. Had that grand and 
heroic exodus, like the mere commercial enterprises to 
which most colonies owe their foundation, been unac- 
companied by woman, at its first outgoing, it had, with- 
out a visible miracle, assuredly failed, and the world 
had wanted its fairest example of the Christian virtues, 
its most unequivocal tokens, that the Providence, which 
kindled the pillar of fire to lead the wandering steps of 
its people, yet has its chosen tribes, to whom it vouch- 
safes its wisest guidance and its choicest blessings. 
Other communities, nations, races, may glory in the ex- 
ploits of their fathers ; but it has been reserved to us of 
New England to know and to boast, that Providence 
has made the virtues of our mothers a yet more indis- 
pensable condition, and certain ground, both of our past 
prosperity and our future hope. 

The strength of the domestic feeling engendered by 
the influences which I have described, and the truer and 
more intelligent mutual regard between the sexes, which 
is attributable to the same causes, are the principal rea- 
sons why those monastic institutions, which strike at 
the very root of the social fabric, and are eminently 
hostile to the practice of the noblest and loveliest public 
and private virtues, have met with less success, and 
numbered fewer votaries in Northern than in Southern 
Christendom. The celibacy of the clergy was last 
adopted, and first abandoned, in the North ; the follies 
of the stylites, the lonely hermitages of the Thebaid, 



386 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

the silence of La Trappe, the vows, which, seeming to 
renounce the pleasures of the world, do but abjure its 
better sympathies, and in fine, all the selfish austerities 
of that corrupted Christianity, which grossly seeks to 
compound by a mortified body for an unsubdued heart, 
originated in climates unfavorable to the growth and 
exercise of the household virtues. 

The composure and concentration of domestic life 
are peculiarly propitious to intellectual occupation, to 
habits of patient mental labor, and to spiritual contem- 
plation; and all these tendencies are strengthened, and 
the mind is predisposed to serious thought, by the 
mournful silence of the woods, the imprisonment of the 
lively current of the streams, the retreat of many tribes 
of animated being, the solitude of a sparse population, 
and the want of novelty and incident, which character- 
izes the wintry repose of nature in most cold climates. 

These hereditary propensities our ancestors shared in 
common with all the descendants of the Gothic stock. 
The circumstances of their emigration would naturally 
incline them to theological speculation, and in the want 
of means for more varied mental culture, they could 
scarcely seek elsewhere food for a meditative spirit, than 
in the one book, which was found beneath the roof of 
the humblest cabin, and which they held to contain all 
useful moral precepts for this life, all needful guidance 
for that which is to come. 

It was long ago said, that the most efficient mental 
training is the thorough and long continued study of 
some one production of a master mind, and it has be- 
come proverbial, that the most irresistible of intellectual 
gladiators is the man of one book, he that wields but a 
single weapon. If such be the effect of appropriating, 
and as it were, assimilating and making connatural with 
ourselves, the fruits of a fellow creature's mental ef- 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 387 

forts, what may we not expect from the study and com- 
prehension of that book, which is a revelation, nay, a 
reflection, of the mind of our Maker ? What can with- 
stand a champion, who wields a naked faulchion drawn 
from the armory of the most High? With our Puri- 
tan ancestors, the Bible was the text-book of parental 
instruction ; it was regarded with fond and reverent par- 
tiality, as the choicest classic of the school, it was the 
companion of the closet, the pillow of the lonely way- 
farer, the only guide to happiness beyond the tomb. Of 
all Christian sects, the Puritans were most profoundly 
versed in the sacred volume; of all men they have best 
exemplified the spirit of its doctrines; of all religious 
communities, they have most abundantly enjoyed those 
blessings, wherewith God has promised to crown his 
earthly church.^ 

It is to early familiarity with the Bible, to its perse- 
vering study, and its daily use, that we must chiefly 
ascribe the great intellectual power of the English Puri- 
tans of the seventeenth century, and the remarkable 
metaphysical talent of many of their American descen- 
dants. Intellectual philosophy, the knowledge of the 
spiritual in man, is literally, as well as figuratively, a 
divine science. It can be successfully pursued, only 
where the divine word, undistorted by any gloss of hu- 
man authority, may be both freely read and openly dis- 
cussed, and where the relations of man to God and all 
other divine things are subject to investigation, checked 
by no fear of legal restraints, the condemnation of 
councils, or the anathema of the priest. Where the doc- 
trine of overruling human jurisdiction in matters of 

^ Both here and elsewhere hold, that the Bible is the only 
in this discourse, I use the rule of Christian faith and 
word Puritan, in its proper practice, and reject the author- 
and catholic acceptation, as em- ity of tradition in rites, doc- 
bracing all those sects, which trine, and church government. 



388 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

faith is received, there may be scholastic subtlety indeed, 
but no metaphysical acuteness or depth. The tone and 
character of abstract speculation are always influenced 
by the subjects with which it is conversant, and the 
mind, which, through fear of trenching on forbidden 
ground, is forced to exert its busy energies on airy tri- 
fles, or questions of impossible solution, will soon be- 
come as frivolous, or as incapable of determination, as 
the puzzles it idly unriddles, or the problems it vainly 
seeks to resolve. All higher philosophy is essentially re- 
ligious, and its fearless, yet reverent study, as a science 
implied, if not revealed in the Scriptures, is 

"Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose," 

but it is the fittest preparation, both for achieving and 
appreciating the highest triumphs of human genius, 
whether in the sublimest flights of poesy, or the glorious 
creations of plastic and pictorial art. 

It has been falsely charged upon Puritanism, that it is 
hostile to taste, to refinement, and to art; and this be- 
cause its equal polity, its simple rites and its humble 
temples, adorned with no pomp of sculptured imagery, 
no warm creations of the voluptuous pencil, minister 
not to the ambitious passions of those who serve at the 
altar, or of those who "only stand and wait," and be- 
cause it finds the loftiest poetry, the most glowing elo- 
quence, the most terrible sublimity, the tenderest pathos, 
and the most ravishing beauty, in the visions of the 
Psalmist and the Prophets, the promises and menaces of 
the old and new covenant, the life and passion of the 
Saviour, the gospel delineations of the happiness of the 
blessed, and prefers such lessons to the vapid and tricksy 
eloquence of the Fathers, such teachings to the shallow 
homiletics of certain British theologians, who aim to 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 389 

unlearn their neophyte how to think, that they may 
then securely dictate what he shall believe. Nay we are 
even told that pure Christianity itself is unpropitious 
to the arts, and that they can attain their most perfect 
development, only as auxiliaries to idolatry and super- 
stition, as if there were a necessary connection between 
the false in religion and the true in art. But if it be 
asked, what human spirit has been most keenly alive to 
feel, and most abundantly endowed with the creative 
power to realize, in living and imperishable forms, all 
that is lovely or terrible in nature, all that is grand or 
beautiful in art, all that is noble or refined in feeling, 
all that is glorious in humanity, and all that is sublime 
in religion, all men unhesitatingly answer, the soul of 
John Milton, the Christian and the Puritan. The 
source whence Milton drew his inspiration was the Sa- 
cred Book. Without a thorough familiarity with that 
volume, such poetry and such prose as that of Milton 
can neither be produced, nor comprehended, for the 
knowledge of the Bible is not merely suggestive of the 
loftiest conception, but, in awakening the mind to the 
idea of the infinite, it confers the power of originating 
as well as of appreciating them. 

But I have not yet fully developed the influence of 
climate upon the character of our fathers. Man is af- 
fected by this influence, as well in his social as in his 
domestic relations. The sparse population of cold cli- 
mates, obliges their inhabitants to restrict their social 
enjoyments to a smaller circle, while their relations, at 
the same time, are extended over a wider space. Social 
intercourse is at all times difficult, often impossible, and 
it is valued the more, because it is comparatively rare, 
and inconvenient of attainment. The solitary cottager, 
widely separated from even his nearest neighbor, 
hemmed in by snow-drifts, or imprisoned by floods, 



390 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

must, on many occasions of trial, dispense with aid, 
which none is at hand to lend, and be content with no 
wider sympathies than those of his own household. 

He thus contracts a feeling of independence and self- 
reliance on the dexterity, strength, and fortitude, which 
have borne him unaided and unscathed through many a 
peril, and at the same time, when occasion offers, he is 
all the readier to yield to others the succour, which ex- 
perience has taught him how hard it is to miss, and to 
exercise the hospitality, for whose refreshing kindness 
he has often vainly longed. The same feeling of gen- 
erous independence is moreover fostered and strength- 
ened by the necessity of waging a perpetual war with a 
sterile soil and an angry sky. Being always victorious 
in this strife, if he relax not his efforts, and depending 
neither upon the caprice nor the unequal justice of man, 
the hardy husbandman acquires the confidence of cer- 
tain success, and spurred by the sting of necessity, and 
cheered by the sure hope, that the patent toil of earing 
will be rewarded by the joyous labors of harvest, he 
contracts a fixed habit of untiring industry, and realizes 
that fine sentiment which Plutarch ascribes to Corio- 
lanus, that it is not for the victor to tire of the battle. 
And if sometimes, in this unequal combat with the ele- 
ments, he win but a doubtful triumph, his spirit is not 
broken, nor are his energies crushed, for he accepts his 
temporary check as a dispensation of the Providence of 
God, or the result of some inflexible, but rarely en- 
forced law of nature, and the humility, which flows 
from the consciousness of his impotence to contend with 
such influences, detracts no whit from his self-respect 
as a man, or his independence in his relations with his 
fellows. 

It is obvious, that a character so constituted is pecu- 
liarly adapted to the reception of the teachings of the 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 391 

Reformation, and in fact, with few exceptions, those 
doctrines were most readily adopted by the tribes most 
exposed to the influences I have described, and the cog- 
nate famihes, which had not been long enough sepa- 
rated from the parent stem, to lose its predominant 
traits. In these races, the preachers of the Reforma- 
tion found prepared hearts. In the thinly peopled re- 
gions of the cold and sterile North, where churches and 
ministers of religion were but sparingly distributed, men 
had already learned, that no temple is more sacred than 
the domestic altar, and that under roofs unconsecrated 
by candle, book or bell, prayer may be acceptably of- 
fered, though sanctioned by the presence of no priest 
decked in the borrowed trappings of old idolatries, and 
they who were wont to recognize the voice of God, in 
the dusky terrors of the wintry tempest, the bellowings 
of the troubled ocean, the avalanche, the torrent, the 
thunder re-echoing from the flanks of the mountain, 
required not to be told, that there needs no anointed 
interpreter between Earth's children and their Heavenly 
Father. 

Such are the constant and abiding influences which 
act upon our character, and so long as the great features 
of nature are unchanged, so long as the same mountains 
and plains and stormy shores shall be exposed to the 
same fierce extremes of cold and heat, so long will the 
character of New England be conspicuous for the traits 
which now distinguish it. 

But besides these permanent and unchanging influ- 
ences, there were temporary but harmonious causes in 
action, which gave a peculiar, and it may be hoped an 
indelible, stamp to the mind which we have inherited 
from our immediate ancestors. We are accustomed to 
speak of the present, as emphatically an age of excite- 
ment, and the last half century has indeed been fruitful 



392 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

of great events ; pregnant with uneasy expectation, that 
have alternately paralyzed with fear, and intoxicated 
with hope, the mind of the Christian world. Humanity 
has taken a long stride. The principles of government 
have been every where discussed, and its forms here 
modified, and there totally revolutionized. Dynasties 
have been overthrown and restored, sometimes under 
most appalling circumstances of bloodshed, violence and 
crime, sometimes with scarcely the loss of a life, or even 
an hour's disturbance of the public peace. War has 
been waged on a scale of efficiency, compared with 
which all former military operations are but the games 
of children. Languages, whose very alphabet had been 
forgotten a thousand years, have been taught again to 
speak, and the learning of the Egyptians, like their 
mummies, has been exhumed from their catacombs. 
The natural sciences and their practical application to 
the arts of material life, have made astounding progress. 
The means of locomotion have been multiplied and im- 
proved, even beyond the tardy dreams of our lagging 
imagination. The Bible, which some would now deny 
even to your children, has been translated into a hun- 
dred barbarous tongues, and the gospel preached to a 
thousand heathen tribes. The far stretched arm of com- 
mercial enterprise has unlocked the treasures of remot- 
est Ind to European cupidity, and even decrepit, im- 
mutable, impenetrable China has been opened by the 
sword's point, her government forced to recognize po- 
litical relations with the Christian world, and her three 
hundred millions of human souls, that have slept un- 
counted centuries, are roused to the stimulating influ- 
ences of European lessons and European example. 

But a moderate knowledge of history will suffice to 
teach us, that all these influences are tame, in compari- 
son with those which acted on the genius of the six- 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 393 

teenth century, and the intellectual, and even material 
action of our own time, except so far as the latter de- 
pends upon machinery, is lethargic, when contrasted 
with the life and energy of that most memorable age. 

The art of printing, then just invented, perfected and 
diffused, was dispelling the mists and obscurity of long 
ages of Cimmerian darkness, which the tapers, whose 
feeble rays paled in the effulgence of this rising sun, 
had vainly striven to penetrate and illumine. While the 
whole learning and history of the past were thus un- 
folded, and the ethereal splendor of Grecian genius, and 
the borrowed lustre of Roman lore, were revealed to the 
dazzled eye of man, he was startled by strange rumors, 
that the conquerors of the Spanish Moors had tamed 
wild ocean, and re-discovered, beyond the illimitable 
western sea, the long lost realm of old Cathay, and that 
the celestial Southern Cross, prophetically imagined by 
the gifted Italian seer,^ had at length gilded the prow 
of the Portuguese pilot, whose rival enterprise had 
passed the flaming bounds, that ancient error raised be- 
tween the Arctic and Antarctic worlds, weathered the 
Cape of Storms, and found a new and easy path to spicy 
Taprobane and golden Ophir. 

Man now first knew the bounds of his empire, and 
was summoned to take solemn possession of that vast 
patrimony, which the superstition of the times declared 
to be the rightful heritage of the Catholic Christian, un- 
lawfully withheld from him by Paynim intruders. 
Every day revealed new discoveries, and inspired new 
dreams. The East and the West disclosed stores of 

^ "lo mi volsi a man destra, e posi mente 
A r altro polo : e vidi quattro stelle 
Non viste mai fuor ch' alia prima gente. 
Coder parea '1 ciel di lor fiammelle. 
Oh settentrional vedovo sito, 
Poi che private sei di mirar quelle !" 

Purgatorio, Canto I. 



394 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

wealth, surpassing the visions of the wildest avarice, 
and promised the most splendid prizes to chivalry, er- 
rant in a new field, where conquest and rapine were en- 
nobled, if not sanctified, by the enthusiasm of a fanatic 
zeal for the dissemination of the Christian faith, and 
the lust of gold was masked even to its votaries, by a 
show of concern for the souls of those they plundered. 
The conquerors oppressed, robbed, murdered, not help- 
less and timid savages, but malignant infidels, and it 
was but a lawful spoiling of the Egyptians, if they ap- 
propriated to themselves their jewels of gold and their 
ingots of silver. 

The gigantic atrocities of Cortes, and the yet more 
miraculous and equally criminal exploits of the terrible 
Albuquerque, were therefore not merely excused, but 
regarded with reverent admiration, as true expressions 
of the spirit of Christian chivalry. Noble and generous 
men might, without impeachment of sordid avarice or 
wanton cruelty, engage in these far off expeditions of 
predatory discovery, and a new channel was opened for 
the spirit of heroic enterprise, which had previously 
found in feudal war its sole dark "path to power and 
praise." 

The invention of gunpowder, though older perhaps 
by centuries, had hitherto scarcely affected the charac- 
ter of European warfare. But the huge and unwieldy 
bombard had now given place to the culverin and saker, 
and the matchlock, pregnant, perhaps, with the fate of 
a king, gleamed from even the humblest shoulder. The 
roar of the cannon drowned the inspiriting clang of the 
buckler, and impenetrable smoke obscured the display of 
personal prowess. The soldier could no longer rely on 
his physical strength, his undismayed courage, his pain- 
fully earned dexterity in the management of his horse 
and his weapons, for safety or renown. Till now, t^- 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 395 

knight, secure in his iron fortress, could be vanquished 
only by a "foeman worthy of his steel" ; but no skill in 
fence could parry the invisible bullet, that, speeding on 
the very wings of death, pierced the stout corselet, from 
which the quarrel rebounded. Gunpowder had brought 
Orlando to the level of the meanest varlet, and a Bay- 
ard or a Sidney might fall by the random shot of a 
craven boor. Soldiers began to act in masses, and in 
blind obedience to the will of their leader, they moved 
through clouds of sulphurous smoke, they knew not 
why or whither. Those humble qualities, unquestion- 
ing obedience and passive courage, which now became 
the first of military virtues, were distasteful to the proud 
independence of the belted knight, and the undistin- 
guishing equality to which fire-arms reduce the bravest 
and the weakest, the hero and the poltroon, was a fatal 
blow to the military pride of feudal chivalry. With 
chivalric warfare ceased also the martial and courtly 
sports which were its school, and the youthful and gal- 
lant knight could no longer prove before the admiring 
eyes of his mistress, in mimic war, how well he merited 
the golden spurs which he had won in the melee of mor- 
tal combat. These changes, the chivalrous spirit of the 
soldier of fortune, and the individuality of thought, 
feeling, and action, which was eminently characteristic 
of that age, could not brook, and he who sought to rise 
by merit, being driven to carve out a new path for his 
own advancement, rejoiced to find, in discovery, con- 
quest, and colonization, a new and inviting field, wide 
enough to exhaust his utmost energies, invested with 
the sublime romance of distant adventure and unknown 
dangers, and bright with the promise of the most shin- 
ing rewards. 

During this period, too, the Ottoman power was at 
its height. The galleys of the Infidel were rowed by 



396 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

Christian slaves, and the clang of the Turkish cymbal 
disturbed the dreams of the Western princes. Chris- 
tianity itself was threatened with extinction, and the 
boldest feared the issue of the doubtful struggle between 
the Moslem and the Giaour. The colossal power of 
half-civilized Russia had not yet interposed its impassa- 
ble barrier against the incursions of the barbarian, and 
even after the Atlantic shores of our own continent were 
fringed with colonies exulting in the security of Chris- 
tian freedom, the Pope still trembled in the Vatican, 
lest the Imaum of St. Sophia should expel the monk 
from St. Peter's, and the prayers of Islam be chaunted 
where mass was sung. All Europe rang with the 

"rumors loud that daunt remotest kings," 

and Stahremberg could have held out but one day 
longer, when John Sobieski came to the relief of the 
fainting city, and taught, by one final lesson, what men 
now scarcely dared to hope, that the Mussulman was 
not to give law to the Christian, and that the crescent 
was not foredoomed to shine upon the prostrate cross. 

But I pass over other exciting and agitating influ- 
ences, to refer to one above and beyond them all, — an 
event so singularly in accordance with the genius of 
that age, and so intimately connected with it by rela- 
tions of action and reaction, that one is at a loss to 
know, whether it partakes more of the character of 
cause or ejffect. I mean the glorious Reformation, 
which set free from moral and intellectual slavery a 
world that had groaned in bondage for a thousand 
years. The Reformation gave permanence and consis- 
tence to impressions and impulses which might other- 
wise have been as fleeting as the causes which produced 
them, and the continued prevalence and more full de- 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 397 

velopment of its doctrines must be considered as the 
principal cause why the spirit of progress, which distin- 
guished the sixteenth century, is at this hour the great- 
est blessing and the most obvious characteristic of those 
nations, where its principles are most clearly appre- 
hended and most cordially adopted. 

Great Britain, from her isolated position, was later in 
feeling the various influences to which I have alluded, 
than many continental countries, and they came to her 
more or less modified by time, distance, and other cir- 
cumstances. Partially conflicting as they were with 
each other, they yet tended to the same common result, 
and finally harmonized and blended into a general im- 
pulse, closely coincident with the better features of the 
hereditary type of old English character. The maxi- 
mum of their effect upon the British people was not 
reached until the reign of Elizabeth. The sun of Eng- 
land's glory, the dawn of her true golden age, then rose 
in splendor, and after a course of a hundred years, 
dimmed only by royal wrongs, it set in shame, with the 
rise of the baleful evening star, that heralded the eleva- 
tion of the vilest of British kings, Spenser sung the 
matins of that centurial day, and Milton, 

"In darkness, and with dangers compassed round," 

chaunted the even-song of the dying swan. The Brit- 
ish nation was then not the accomplice of its rulers. It 
had no part in the murder of Elizabeth's royal guest, no 
share in the malignant follies of the crazy James, or the 
crimes of the accursed triumvirate, Strafliord, Laud and 
Stuart. By one single noblest act, it disowned and 
avenged them all, 

"Upon the neck of crowned Fortune proud 
Did rear God's trophies," 



398 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

and having, by a great example, shown, that the people 
possess not the physical power only, but the rightful 
authority, to depose and solemnly judge their rulers, it 
established the principle, that it is a crime in a Christian 
nation to be oppressed. 

Under such impulses as I have described, the Gothic 
mind attained its most perfect development, in the char- 
acter of the great sect to which the Pilgrims belonged, 
and partook of all the holy, purifying, and ennobling 
influences of the time. Happily for their posterity and 
and our forefathers were "harried out of the land," be- 
prevailed, — majesty executed its magnanimous threat, 
and our forefathers were '"harried out of the land," be- 
fore that character had become enervated, or its lofty 
energies spent, and they brought with them the moral 
virtues of the rigid Puritan, combined with the intellec- 
tual elevation of unfettered Christian philosophy, and 
the chivalrous heroism of bannered knighthood. 

Of the concurrent influences which contributed to 
form the English character of that era, the Reformation 
was indisputably the most important, and it is therefore 
essential to my purpose briefly to examine the true char- 
acter of that great event. Its great characterisic was 
individuality of thought and action, its great principle, 
the right and duty of private judgement, its great imme- 
diate work, the overthrow of that idol phantom, which 
"the likeness of a kingly crown had on," — the refuta- 
tion of the claims of the visible church to reverence, as 
itself a continuing revelation, or rather a divine agency, 
possessed of a qualified personality, a species of incar- 
nation of the Deity, and a fit and lawful object of wor- 
ship. 

It is this characteristic of individual action, which 
so strikingly distinguishes the Reformation from all 
other great religious movements. In the first promul- 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 399 

gation of the Christian reHgion, mere humanity was 
passive. God spake, and man had but to hear and obey. 
None of the fundamental truths of Christianity origi- 
nated in the intellect of man, but the oracle being pro- 
nounced, it was committed to universal human reason 
to expound it, and this fact, before unknown or long 
forgotten, is the great discovery of the Reformers. Fif- 
teen centuries thus elapsed, before the true key was 
applied to the interpretation of the plainest of dispensa- 
tions, and thenceforth human intellect was free to pur- 
sue its highest study, the relations between man and 
his maker. 

I cannot here pause to develop in detail the spirit of 
the Reformation, or to point out the incalculable im- 
portance of its results to the moral and intellectual being 
of man, but I must not omit to notice two great doc- 
trines, equally inseparable from the principle of the 
right and duty of private judgement. The one is the 
theological dogma of the sufficiency of the scriptures, as 
a rule of faith and practice, and the other is the political 
theory of the natural equality of all men; equality in 
kind, though, by reason of diversity of gifts, not in de- 
gree, of rights and duties. The doctrine of the suffi- 
ciency of the pure word of God had indeed been 
preached at an earlier day, but it was brought into dis- 
tinct prominence, by the sect which thence took the 
name of Puritans, and its adoption at once relieved 
Christianity from the burden of arbitrary forms, which, 
incapable of the expression of abstract principle, do at 
best but symbolize truth, with doubtful obscurity, and 
from those frivolous superstitions, and remnants of ma- 
terial worship, which, in many nominally Christian 
countries, make the intelligent infidels, and the ignorant 
idolaters. The theory of natural equality is the true 
foundation of the doctrine of self-government, which is 



400 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

indeed its necessary corollary, and thus our civil as 
well as our religious liberties are mainly due to the Ref- 
ormation. 

That these doctrines were not always clearly stated, 
or even distinctly apprehended, by every father of the 
Reformed church is no doubt true, but they are logical 
deductions from their principles, and were obviously 
felt, and more or less definitely recognized by all of 
them. 

I may be pardoned, if I here pause to notice and re- 
buke that shallow philosophy, which judges sects or 
parties, by the single acts or declarations of individuals, 
whose errors are often the fault of the age, or the tem- 
perament of the man, or the mere excess of reaction, 
rather than by their fundamental principles, which, ly- 
ing at the base of the system, must in the end make 
themselves felt and acknowledged, and thenceforth 
characterize the action of their adherents. Individual 
instances of fanaticism or ecclesiastical tyranny in the 
Reformers or the Puritans, therefore, have no tendency 
to convict their system of error, while the intolerance 
and bigotry of their opponents are the necessary conse- 
quence of the exclusive principles they maintain. The 
apparent results of the promulgation of great truths are 
often for a time equivocal, and even paradoxical. The 
weight at the end of a cord passing over a pulley follows 
the hand that draws it, though moving in a contrary 
direction. The true results are slowly developed, and 
it is sometimes a full century between seed time and 
harvest. A principle never produces its legitimate 
fruits, until it is precisely and distinctly enunciated, and 
men often act in partial accordance with truth, from 
some dim and half unconscious apprehension of its 
spirit, long before any master mind has clearly devel- 
oped and proclaimed it. 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 401 

If, then, the character of the Puritanical system, as 
fairly deducible from a priori examination of its ab- 
stract principles, be compared with its actual tendencies, 
as developed in practice, it will be found that experi- 
ence has most amply confirmed the promises of its the- 
ory. No where has there been more of liberty and less 
of license, no where more of public charity and less of 
private ostentation, no where more of Christian influ- 
ence and less of priestly usurpation, no where more of 
Heaven's best blessings and fewer of its judgements, 
than in Puritanical New England. 

Nor, on the other hand, are we authorized to con- 
clude, that those uncharitable and exclusive systems, 
which have taken root among us, are harmless in their 
tendencies, because they have not yet here produced the 
mischiefs which have flowed from them in European 
countries, and which seem to be involved in their very 
principles. Here, they are held in check, and modified 
in their action, by the want of numerical force, the influ- 
ence of free institutions, the separation of church and 
state, the fundamental law of the land. But he who 
would know their real character, as developed in their 
action, must study their workings in times and coun- 
tries, where they have been least obstructed. Intoler- 
ance is of the essence of every exclusive system, and he 
that holds to the necessity of conformity will assuredly 
enforce it, whenever he feels that he can safely exercise 
the power. 

It is, as I have already hinted, a great error to sup- 
pose that the Reformation was but a change of religion. 
It was equally a reformation in the state, and implied 
an universal political revolution. The doctrines to 
which I have alluded came to be considered as equally 
truths of Christianity and of civil polity. They neces- 
sarily laid the axe at the root of aristocracy in the state 



402 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

as well as in the church. The priesthood, which had 
stolen the insignia, and profanely arrogated the office, 
of both Jewish and Pagan hierarchy, having been found 
to be an usurper, lawfully claiming its great privileges 
neither by grant nor succession, it was natural that men 
should inquire by what title the baron held his pre- 
rogatives, and the consequence was, that both lay and 
ecclesiastical lords were stripped of their dignities, or 
restricted in their assumed privileges, in every com- 
monwealth, which adopted the reformed religion, and 
the Reformation thus took the first step towards the 
practical abolition of abuses, that Revelation had abro- 
gated, fifteen hundred years before. 

By one of those strange practical paradoxes, of which 
history furnishes so many examples, the boasted cham- 
pions of the largest liberty, and the narrowest op- 
pugners of the right of private judgment, are now ex- 
emplifying the tendency of extremes to meet, by uniting 
in a jarring alliance, and warring with common hate, 
but incongruous zeal, against the principles of the Ref- 
ormation. The former teach that the mental slavery 
of the dark ages is strictly compatible wath the most 
unbounded freedom of personal action, and the latter, 
that this same moral and intellectual bondage is the 
only means of suppressing or controlling the destructive 
and anarchical tendencies wdiich they justly ascribe to 
their allies in this unholy cause. The conservative and 
destructive parties then begin alike. Both aim to over- 
throw all that is good and venerable in our civil and 
ecclesiastical polity, and while the one proposes to erect, 
on the ruins of our present scheme of rational liberty 
restrained by law, a new wonder-working system, 
wherein each shall enjoy unlimited personal license, 
miraculously combined with supreme control over the 
action of his neighbor, the other uses ultra democracy 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 403 

as a bugbear to frighten, and pretended conservatism as 
a lure to persuade, us into apostacy from our hereditary- 
principles, and an unqualified surrender of our reason 
into the hands of those who claim a divine right to over- 
rule it. It requires not the eye of a prophet to discern 
the ultimate common tendency of these discordant 
teachings, and no man versed in history can doubt, 
that the triumph of either party would alike involve the 
final destruction of every valuable feature of American 
society. Religious conservatism asks us to admit, that 
the Almighty has abdicated the reins of his moral and 
spiritual government, and that princes and prelates 
are the rightful successors to the vacant throne. Prog- 
ress, arriving at the same result by a different route, 
brings us to that anarchy of the multitude, which is the 
sure precursor of the capricious tyranny of the despot, 
and the unrelenting rule of the priest. 

It will not be amiss to cast a glance at the obscure 
and distant past, and to inquire what we have to gain 
by abandoning the venerable institutions of our fathers, 
and restoring the dark and mouldering fabric, that Hea- 
ven's own vengeful lightning long since overthrew. 

The vaunted period, whose characteristic traits you 
are asked to revive, extends from the eleventh to the six- 
teenth century, from Hildebrand to Luther. This was 
the boasted age of chivalry, the golden era of Catholic 
Christianity, when the temporal supremacy of the 
church was almost universally acknowledged; kings 
submitted to flagellation at the hands of a monk, and 
emperors held the stirrup of the Roman pontiff. This 
is the age in which it has been made our reproach, that 
America has no part, the age to which the romancer and 
the novelist refer us for all the graces that adorn hu- 
manity ; the historian, for the highest examples of civil 
and political excellence ; the Romanist, for the most per- 



404 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

feet form of Christian life. But what was the real con- 
dition of Europe during these five centuries of refine- 
ment, loyalty, heroism and Christian devotion ? It is a 
matter of some difficulty to penetrate the thick obscurity 
that shrouds the popular history of times, whose only 
chroniclers were the haughty noble and the unsympa- 
thizing monk ; but even from these unwilling witnesses 
enough can be extracted to prove that humanity has, at 
no time, and in no land, groaned under heavier burdens 
than those imposed on its suffering shoulders by the 
priesthood and the barons of Christian Europe in the 
middle ages. The critical student of mediseval history 
beholds a scene, to use those awful words of Milton, 

"With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms," 

and the lurid light that glares from the pile of the mar- 
tyr, and the incendiary flames of feudal warfare, suf- 
fices to show, that behind the glittering curtain of 
knightly and baronial life, there lay and writhed a 
world of woe. The rights of man, as man, found no 
advocate, the rights of conscience, no defender. It was 
not yet discovered, that the ruler, the law-maker, is 
bound by the law he promulgates, and law itself was 
known, not as the dictate of reason aiming at the com- 
mon good, but as another name for organized oppres- 
sion or arbitrary will. Municipal law indeed, except 
in cities and boroughs, which had bought their liberties, 
existed only as a measure, not of common rights, but of 
privilege, in derogation of right, and there was no con- 
trolling authority, but the canons of the church and the 
will of the stronger. Society was a pandemonium, 
where every unholy passion revelled without restraint, 
and the rights of the ruler knew no limit, but that of 
his power to enforce them. The vassals of every feu- 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 405 

dal lord, whether lay or ecclesiastical, were bound to till 
his fields, to minister the means of gratifying every pas- 
sion and supplying every want, to adopt his quarrels, 
to follow him in his wars of glory, conquest or revenge, 
to live in his service, to die in his cause. If he fell into 
the power of his enemy, they furnished forth the ran- 
som, if he married a daughter, they provided the dowry, 
if he made his son a knight, they defrayed the expenses 
of the equipage, the feast and the tournament. If he 
desired to strengthen his castle, or enlarge his dun- 
geons, they labored, unpaid, to build the fortress, which 
was designed to awe them into unresisting submission, 
and the prisons in which they were doomed to pine, if 
they incurred his lordly displeasure. The grave, even, 
was an occasion of new exactions by the allied vultures 
of church and state, and when death released the hunted 
victim from the grasp of his oppressors, the priest who 
had shrived the dying sinner, lingered to choose from 
the little herd the fattest beast, while the bailiff was ran- 
sacking the house of mourning, to select for his lord 
the choicest treasure as their lawful perquisites of mor- 
tuary and heriot. 

Such were the universally conceded rights of the lord, 
such the undisputed duties of the vassal. But these 
were not all, these were not even the worst oppressions. 
Beyond all these, the Christian baron claimed and ex- 
ercised rights that we cannot name, and from the asser- 
tion of which, even the Mogul or the Turk would re- 
coil; and, if not satisfied with the enjoyment of all 
these oppressive privileges, he chose to resort to force, 
to extort what he could not lawfully exact, yet the law, 
which nominally restrained him, provided no sanction 
against its own violation, and the wronged and injured 
vassal was utterly without redress. These outrages 
were sanctioned and aggravated by an every where 



406 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

present, overawing, unreasoning, unsympathizing influ- 
ence, which strengthened tlie arm of the civil power by- 
all the terrors of eternal perdition, and sought to force 
Heaven itself into a league with the oppressor. Thus 
the constitution of the state not only allowed, but even 
invited, those awful oppressions, and the sword and the 
crozier combined to put down every attempt of the 
populace, to recover those rights, without which man 
is no longer human. Resistance indeed was sometimes 
attempted by the humbler classes, but the superior skill 
and discipline of the nobles, aided by the anathemas of 
the church, which mingled its thunders with the shout 
of "the riders that trampled them down," never failed 
to triumph over the ignorant, ill-trained and slavish 
peasantry, and European historians still treat these 
spasms of agonized humanity, these writhings of the 
worm that is trodden upon, as treasonable insurrections, 
instigated by the hope of plunder and rapine, and aggra- 
vated by every crime that disgraces humanity. 

In all these struggles, we scarcely find a single eccle- 
siastic arrayed upon the side of mercy, scarcely a single 
tonsured advocate of the rights of man. But I should 
do injustice, were I here to omit to notice the heroic 
John Ball, honor to his name ! who purchased a lasting 
renown, by daring to prefer the cause of humanity to 
the interests of his order. Thrice was this "folysshe 
preest," as the old chronicler calls him, incarcerated, not 
in the royal dungeons as a rebel, but in the "Bysshop of 
Canterburie's prison" as an ecclesiastical offender, for 
the crime of preaching the Christian doctrine of equal- 
ity. But neither chains, nor the fear of death, were 
able to quell his generous spirit, and he persevered in 
his noble, but unavailing efforts, until he sealed his tes- 
timony with his blood. ^ 

^ Froissart (Lord Berners' translation), Vol. I. cap. 381. 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 407 

Nor is it true, that these ages were remarkable for 
the exercise of Christian benevolence. The artifices of 
the clergy, indeed, extorted large sums for the erection 
of hospices for the pilgrims to the numerous shrines of 
idolatrous superstition, and the religious houses dealt 
out a meagre dole to the starving poor, whom their own 
exactions had contributed to impoverish, but it may- 
well be doubted, whether the aggregate charities of 
Catholic Europe ever exceeded the legal provision, 
which we are compelled to make for the outcast mendi- 
cants and malefactors, whom the generous munificence 
of Europe ejects upon our shores, to mend our morals 
and reform our religion, because it finds it cheaper to 
transport them hither, than to maintain them in alms- 
houses and prisons at home. 

The period we are considering was not distinguished 
alone by unrelenting tyranny and brutal oppression. 
It was indeed emphatically an era of spiritual and intel- 
lectual darkness. No ray from the few and distant 
lights, that twinkled through the gloom, e'er fell upon 
the groping multitude, from whom they were as far re- 
moved as the telescopic stars from earth's orbit. The 
great and good minds, which to our sharpened vision 
shine conspicuous through the murky night, were but 
suns in eclipse to their contemporaries. They wrote 
and spoke for each other, and it was no part of their 
vocation to dispel the darkness, that enveloped the err- 
ing wanderers beneath them. So, in the material hea- 
vens, resounding orb responds to orb, but mortal ears 
are deaf to the music of their harmony; resplendent 
sphere enlightens sphere, but they illuminate not the 
chaotic void, through which they wheel their appointed 
courses, and the pathway of the most radiant star re- 
tains no vestige of the beams it sheds. 

Superficial speculators affect to treat the prevailing 



4o8 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

opinions, in regard to the debased condition of society 
in the middle ages, as a vulgar prejudice, and ask us to 
judge the spirit of those times, not by the general char- 
acter and fundamental principles of their institutions, or 
their actual influence on the physical and moral well 
being of man, but by the lives and opinions of the few- 
enlightened men, who were distinguished rather by 
their relative superiority to the contemporary standard 
of their age, than by their intrinsic excellence. But 
here the error lies in a supposed analogy between those 
times and our own. There is in our day, a class of the 
factitious great, who follow, rather than lead, public 
opinion, and whose whole wisdom consists in an in- 
stinctive sagacity, that enables them to predict and an- 
ticipate the changes of that shifting current, and thus 
to appear to guide its movements, when in fact they 
are but the first to yield to its impulse. The lives of 
such are indeed a sure index to the temper of times and 
countries, where public opinion has any substantive ex- 
istence. But in the ages of which we speak, there was 
no recognized public, no common reason, in short, no 
community. As the French monarch said of himself, 
the ruler was the state, and the priest was the church. 

The learned of the middle ages had no sympathies, 
no common language, no common interests with the 
mass of their contemporaries, and in general exerted no 
influence over their own age, unless it were by the mere 
superiority of intellect over brute force. But man can 
beneficially influence man, only through the medium of 
sympathetic relations, and when this golden chain is 
severed, the teacher becomes a tyrant, and the pupil a 
slave. 

From all these horrors, the Reformation was the one 
indispensable, and only sufficient means of deliverance, 
as its principles are still our only safeguard. It is yet 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 409 

too soon to assume, that its results are fully developed, 
but its fundamental grounds seem to involve all that is 
necessary for the erection of a harmonious but inde- 
pendent system of civil and ecclesiastical polity, which 
shall be as perfect as human nature will admit. 

The free development of its principles has received a 
check, from the re-action which followed the overthrow 
of Napoleon, and one can hardly cast a glance at the 
recent history of the human mind in Europe, and espe- 
cially in that country, which common consent places at 
the head of the European political system, without 
doubting whether society be not in fact retrograding, 
instead of advancing. Observe the exclusive devotion 
of British intellect to schemes of mechanical and mate- 
rial improvement, the humble character, with few ex- 
ceptions, of her philosophical writers, the shallow tone 
of her sesthetical criticism, the universal idolatry of 
rank and wealth, the suffering and brutified condition 
of the masses; consider that the doctors of her religion 
are reviving old and effete superstitions, closing their 
eyes to the beams of the noon-day sun, and groping in 
the darkness of the middle ages for spiritual light, and 
you can scarcely resist the conclusion, that, to use the 
quaint words of that apocryphal fragment ascribed to 
Sir Thomas Browne, "she is grown oblivious and dot- 
eth. Her ancient civility is gone, and her face become 
wrinkled and tetrick." Wordsworth seems to have 
deeply felt all this, when, in that noble sonnet, he in- 
voked the spirit of the mighty Puritan, whose "soul was 
like a star, and dwelt apart," in words too harsh for me 
to quote, too true, perhaps, for him nozv to dare to 
utter.^ 

^ ''Milton ! thou shouldst be living at this hour : 
England hath need of thee ; she is a fen 
Of stagnant waters : altar, sword, and pen, 
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, 



410 XEW EXGL-\XD SOCIETY OR-\TIOXS 

The "dishonest victory" of ^^*ate^loo, necessary, per- 
haps, for the rescue of Europe from the temporarA- iron 
rule of a militan.* despotism, came full ten years too 
soon, and imhappily arrested, before his task was done, 
that great usurper, who, himself a despot and a t^Tant, 
was unconsciously working out his high vocation of 
preparing men for the acquisition and enjoyment of 
rational freedc^n, by battering down old and mischief- 
working institutions, practically refuting hoar}- false- 
hoods, and dispelling the mists of antiquated prejudice. 
The principal aim of those, who have administered the 
governments of Europe since the downfall of Xapoleon. 
seems to have been to earn.- back the shadow cm the 
dial, to re-construct the shattered walls, and replace the 
rotten frame-work which he had demolished. Restitu- 
tion, not reparation, has been their motto, and the derg}- 
of those cotmtries. which have a religion of state, con- 
sidering themselves official menbers of the body poli- 
tic have emulated and outstripped thdr superiors in 
this bad work of re-edification, and not conteit with 
simple restoration, are seeking, with more or less of 
openness, to re-build not only what Xapoleon, but even 
what Luther overtlirew. 

Even with us. too, the evil leaven is at work. The 
reaction, which, as some tokens hopefully indicate, is 
well nigh spent at its source, has at length exteided 
hitiier. and a retrograde spirit is spreading among us, 
imhappily unaccompanied by the corrective, which, in 

Have forfeited thdr ancieu: Ensrlish dower 
Of inward happiness. We are selnsii men : 
Oh ! rai>e cs -np. rernm to us again : 
And give ns manners^ virrae, freedoni. power. 
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart : 
Tbon hadsi a voice whose sound was like the sea : 
Pure as the naked heavens, majesric free. 
So didst thon travel on life's common way. 
In cheerful godliness: and ya thy heart 
The lowliest duties on herself did lay." 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 411 

Europe, deprives it of half its power of mischief. I 
mean that intense nationaHty, which now pervades every 
European people, from the bare North Cape to the 
southernmost headland of smiling Greece. The national 
pride of the phlegmatic Northman, the ardent son of the 
fervid South, the philosophic German, the mercurial 
Frenchman, and the semi-oriental Sclavonian, has been 
roused, and each is striving, with enlightened and 
hourly increasing zeal, to restore the vernacular tongue 
of his native land to its ancient purity, and to excite 
contemporary emulation by bringing into the light the 
history of its earlier ages, and thus to awaken that love 
of country, which the cosmopolite theories of French 
philosophy were threatening with general extinction, 
while the progress of French arms seemed to portend 
for Paris a supremacy like that of Rome, when even the 
Greek gloried in being a native of a city, to whose chil- 
dren the privileges of Roman citizenship had been 
vouchsafed. 

Knowing that neither can there be private virtue 
without a generous patriotism, wise men every where 
foster this spirit, and teach that even the hardy energies 
of the early stages of semi-barbarous society are not to 
be despised as void of instruction. In them, we see 
the germs of more expanded and cultivated virtues. 
They deposited in the earth the pabulum of better fruits, 
even as by the generous economy of material nature, 
wild and spontaneous vegetation feeds, not exhausts, 
the fruitfulness of the soil, and by alternate growth and 
decay, elaborates from earth, water, air, and lays up in 
store for future ages, the materials of fertility for plants 
of nobler growth. 

The love of countr}^, with all the reverential sympa- 
thies it implies, is among the strongest impulses in every 
rightly constituted mind, and next to self-respect, is the 



412 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

most important ingredient in the character of a vir- 
tuous man. The mental eye, unlike the natural, mag- 
nifies objects as they recede, and every true man cher- 
ishes for his ancestry an affectionate partiality, that 
leads him to see in them the virtues of the golden, com- 
bined with the wisdom of the iron age. It is in this 
feeling, that we find the root of true conservatism, and 
every movement, whether retrograde or progressive, 
which wars with this sacred impulse, is not unwise 
merely, but unnatural, imchristian, criminal. 

It is to the want of an intelligent national pride — 
the universal solvent, which melts and combines into a 
harmonious whole the otherwise discordant traits of in- 
dividual and local feeling — that we must ascribe the 
non-existence of a well-defined and consistent American 
character. We have abundance of inflated complacency 
in the present, abundance of boastful expectation in re- 
spect to the future, but too little of sympathetic and 
reverent regard for a glorious past, without which, nei- 
ther this present nor that future had been possible. 

This is partly the effect of a diversity of origin, local 
interests and political relations, under a federative sys- 
tem, but its real source lies deeper, and its root may 
be found in one of our proudest characteristics. It is 
proper to all free people, and eminently to that family 
of nations to which we belong, to love abstract truth 
beyond material symbols, to follow the spirit, instead of 
adhering to the form, and to bow to the principle, rather 
than to worship its visible manifestation. But honor- 
able and noble as this propensity is, it is not without its 
dangers. In seeking for abstract truth, we are prone 
to overlook the conditions which limit its practical ap- 
plication, and to forget, that in the moral and the politi- 
cal, as well as the physical world, the deductions of 
science can never be strictly realized in practice. Nor 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 413 

is this the only, or even the greatest danger, to which 
the trait in question exposes us. Doctrines tied to no 
forms, connected with no locaHties, relying upon no 
authority but individual reason, attaching no sacred- 
ness to aught cognizable by the senses, are more easily 
overthrown, than when they assume the shape of belief, 
entrenched behind the bulwarks of form, prejudice and 
opinion. In Europe, where every rock has its name, 
every landscape its history, the love of country and its 
institutions, is at once strengthened by thousands of 
venerable associations, and narrowed to the humble 
shape rather of attachment to localities, than of enlight- 
ened and expanded patriotism. But with us, who have 
no dim traditions, no hoary fables, to give, not indi- 
viduality only, but almost life, to plain and mountain, 
and rock and river, patriotism, though a larger, nobler, 
and more intellectual sentiment, is yet a less tenacious 
impulse. It is, therefore, a duty most solemnly incum- 
bent upon every man, who prizes institutions dependent 
like ours upon no other security than a sound public 
opinion, and who feels himself competent to appreciate 
the grounds upon which they are built, to exert that 
"one talent which is death to hide," in maintaining, 
defending and popularizing their principles. Our 
American liberties are menaced, not by apathy and ig- 
norance alone, but we have too many proofs of the 
existence, even among ourselves, of a determined hos- 
tility to the cardinal principles on which they rest. 
Nor let any deny the approach of danger, because as 
yet he hears not the din, and sees not the smoke of the 
encounter. The earthquake, which upheaves mountains, 
and the tempest, that scatters an armada, are invisible 
forces, but there are tokens whereby wise men foresee 
the shock. Such indications of danger to our dearest 
interests we may find among a class of our own citi- 



414 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

zens, who glory in a truckling submission to European 
teachings, in an unnatural alienation from all that is 
great and good and reverend in our own history, in a 
dignified affectation of supercilious contempt for every 
manifestation of conscious American pride, in a wrong 
headed perversity, that loves to dwell on the dark side 
of our national character, clothes in the livery of anx- 
ious fear the wishes of an alien heart, and feigns to 
tremble for the stability of those institutions which it 
is doing its utmost to undermine. We have too much 
of that blind zeal of the pupil, which outruns the pre- 
cepts of its foreign teachers, too much of that question- 
able Protestantism, that trembles with sympathetic fear 
when you attack the corruptions of Popery, too much 
of that craven and traitorous spirit, that is ashamed of 
its birthplace, murmurs against the Providence which 
appointed its fatherland, and grieves, because it is only 
through the Pilgrims, that it can trace its lineage to 
their titled and mitred oppressors. Nay, more than 
this; sons of New England have dared to insult the 
memory, and blaspheme the God, of their fathers, by 
denying to that congregation, which He gathered in 
the wilderness, the name and attributes of a Christian 
Church. 

It may indeed be doubted, whether it be possible now 
to construct a harmonious type of national American 
character out of the discordant materials which have 
been assembled, and which an unwise and short-sighted 
policy suffers to be kept in perpetual fermentation, by 
the infusion, not of new ingredients only, but of hos- 
tile elements. A nation, like an organic being, must 
grow, not by accretion, but by development, and should 
receive into its system nothing incapable of assimila- 
tion. But from this and many other influences perni- 
cious to the symmetry of our national character, New 



GEORGE PERKINS MARSH 41 5 

England is, happily, in a great measure, exempt. I ar- 
rogate not for her a monopoly of all the excellences of 
American genius, nor do I insist that she is the sole 
depositary of the vital principles of American life, but 
her population is homogeneous in its origin, her com- 
ponent parts harmonious in their organization, and she 
possesses the unity of character that belongs to a peo- 
ple, which owes its aggregate existence to one great 
end — the noblest end that can inspire social man — the 
enjoyment of civil and religious liberty. Are then this 
character, and the institutions to which it has given 
birth, worth preserving? This is the great question, 
which New England and her sons are called upon now 
to answer, once and forever. For if our individuality 
is lost, our hereditary principles abandoned for a single 
hour, there is no recuperative energy, b}^ which we can 
re-assume the vitality we have suicidall}^ surrendered. 
The alchemists professed to be able to consume the 
flower, and raise it again out of its ashes. But it was 
at best a shadowy resurrection, and the visible image 
had neither fragrancy, color, nor life. A nation has but 
a single life, and the people that perishes, because it is 
recreant to itself, can hope for no palingenesia. 

We are then summoned by every consideration of 
present interest, of enlightened patriotism, of decent re- 
spect for the memory of our fathers, of reverence for 
the religion of our God, to do our utmost to keep alive 
the sacred fire, and to transmit inviolate and unim- 
paired to future ages the heirloom which it is a crime 
to alienate. To our Pergamus a palladium is com- 
mitted. To New England our common country must 
look, as the purest source and surest repertory of those 
true conservative principles in church and state, with- 
out which, both church and state will soon become no 
blessing, but a curse. 



4i6 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

The greatest of living poets has told us, that the lan- 
guage of freedom has two principal dialects. 

"Two Voices are there ; one is of the sea, 
One of the mountains : each a mighty Voice : 
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, 
They were thy chosen music, Liberty !" 

These voices are emphatically the nursery hymns of 
our ancient mother. The infant ear of all her sons is 
tuned to the 

"roar 
Of ocean on a wintry shore," 

or the howlings of the storm, whose wings are heavy 
with frozen mists from the cavernous recesses of her 
rugged mountains. No alien soil intercepts our morn- 
ing dawn. The earliest beams of the orient sun, emerg- 
ing from ocean's bed, are shed full upon our old tnetrop- 
olis, and his waning rays long linger on the soaring 
peaks of our everlasting hills — fit emblem of the light 
of Christian freedom, which first illuminated our own 
"gray fathers," and shall latest gild the graves of the 
Pilgrims, the cradles of their children. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE DAY AND 
ITS LESSONS 

CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 
1846 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 
(1802- 1875.) 

Though a native of New Brunswick, the Rev. Charles Went- 
worth Upham was of New England parentage. He came early 
in life to Boston, and was for twenty years Congregational pas- 
tor in Salem. Later he became successively member of the 
Massachusetts House, President of the State Senate, and, for 
one term, member of Congress. He was for a time editor of 
the "Unitarian Church Review," and among his published writ- 
ings are several biographies and an important study of the 
Salem witchcraft. 



ORATION 



Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the New England 
Society in the City of New York. 

THE topics that claim our consideration, on this an- 
niversary, are so obvious, and so inseparable from 
the occasion and from the sentiments awakened by it, 
and those sentiments are so uniform in all hearts, that 
no ingenious and elaborate exordium is needed to bring 
your minds into an appropriate frame. The field over 
which our meditations are led, this day, is not at a re- 
mote point from our spontaneous and involuntary asso- 
ciations, to be reached only by long-drawn approaches, 
but opens at once upon the vision. 

On the 22d of December, in the year 1620, a company 
of Englishmen landed on the shore of what has since 
been the township of Plymouth, in the present State of 
Massachusetts. This circumstance has long been re- 
garded with a just and felicitous discrimination, as the 
opening scene in the drama of civilized humanity in the 
New World. 

Voyagers had often before, we know not from how 
early a period, visited the coasts of America. Scien- 
tific philologists, and philosophical students of manners, 
customs, and other memorials, have imagined them- 
selves to have traced, more or less clearly, evidence of 
transmigrations from the older continents to this, in the 

419 



420 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

ages of a remote antiquity. European settlements, 
many of which quickly disappeared, but, in some in- 
stances, giving rise to permanent and populous Prov- 
inces and States, were commenced at dates anterior to 
the landing of the Pilgrims, on the day we commem- 
orate. 

But the attending and resulting circumstances of that 
event are so peculiar in their character, so momentous in 
their bearings, and so wide-spread in their influence, 
that, by general consent, the opening of the continent 
of America to the civilization of Christendom, is every- 
where getting to be considered as dating from the hour 
when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. It may safely 
be taken for granted, that, whatever particular interest 
different localities may feel in contemplating the origin 
of their own communities, whether before or after the 
226. of December, 1620, all will acquiesce and conspire 
in regarding the Rock of Plymouth as the point from 
which the ever-advancing and ever-expanding wave of 
Anglo-Saxon liberty and light began to flow over Amer- 
ica. Taking this comprehensive view of the subject, 
presenting the occasion as the best example, and highest 
instance of the various settlements by Europeans and 
Christians, on the American continent, we may rely 
upon the sympathy of those of our fellow-citizens of a 
different colonial origin from ourselves, who may honor 
us with their presence, in the sentiments and associa- 
tions to which we yield our own minds and hearts. 
While, as the descendants of New England men, with 
filial and grateful reverence, we pay honor to their mem- 
ory, it is my purpose, so far as the privilege and ability 
are given me to determine the spirit of the day, that 
the contemplation of your ancestral glories shall con- 
vey to your hearts lessons which may be profitably pon- 
dered by all Americans, in whatever portion of the Re- 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 421 

public they may have their abode, and from whatever 
sources they have sprung. 

Before taking up the topics suggested by any more 
limited view of the subject, I wish to concentrate atten- 
tion upon the event we commemorate in the light I have 
suggested, as, by way of eminence, marking the era of 
the contact and intercommunication of the two hemi- 
spheres of our globe. Let us pause, at the outset, and 
open our minds to receive and appreciate the interest 
and grandeur of the thought. From the beginning of 
time, the great oceans had been impassable walls, keep- 
ing the opposite sides of our planet in distant and com- 
plete separation. A mysterious, but all-wise, Provi- 
dence held them apart. For thousands of years, the 
earth, as it revolved on its axis, had presented to the 
sun and the stars the vast double continent of America, 
shrouded in moral and intellectual darkness. Extend- 
ing from pole almost to pole, it embraced, in its geo- 
graphical features, all the forms of sublimity and beauty 
of scenery, and every advantage which can flow from 
the arrangement of land and water, rivers and lakes, 
mountains and meadows; and in the several depart- 
ments of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, 
an unrivalled richness of material and magnificence of 
display. Its surface, for the most part, remained under 
the deep shadows of primeval forests, and was traversed 
by roaming tribes of benighted savages. It is true that, 
on some parts of the continent, there are vestiges of a 
peculiar and inexplicable form of barbaric splendor, in 
vast and shapeless mounds of earth, and structures of 
masonry and statuary ; but there is no indication what- 
ever of the existence and action at any time or to any 
extent, on any part of its entire length and breadth, of 
an element of moral, social and political progress. 

The character of the aboriginal American cannot fail 



422 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

to be a subject of interest in all coming times. It ex- 
hibited many of the traits and faculties of human na- 
ture in an extraordinary development of dignity and 
strength. Fortitude and manly endurance, heroism 
and patriotism, will ever find their brightest exemplars 
in v^arrior chiefs whose spheres of glory were the wild 
scenes and gloomy recesses of American forests. But 
the traditions that relate their story can scarcely be 
made to take their place among the records of real and 
authenticated events. They pass before the mind like 
shadowy visions of the imagination. We read them as 
we do the pages of an Epic. The mysterious destiny 
of extinction, which is taking effect upon the race, press- 
ing it off from the surface of the earth, seems to apply 
to its history also, which is crowded out from its proper 
department, exhaled as it were into ideal forms, and 
transferred to the sphere of fancy and romance. The 
reason of this is obvious. Their origin and progress 
are buried in utter oblivion. We behold them, as they 
appeared but for a moment, as in a dream, and then 
vanished away. They have told us no story of their 
earlier fortunes, and they have left no traces of their 
existence or influence upon the condition of mankind. 
In that highest sense of history, in which it is to be 
regarded as the narrative of the continuous progress of 
humanity, as the memorial of stages of advancement, 
one leading on to another, by the law of cause and ef- 
fect, in the moral world, no space is occupied by the 
American tribes ; and it is the same, in the comprehen- 
sive view I am now taking, of the connection of the 
career of the human race with the two grand divisions 
of the earth, as if the foot of man had never trodden the 
soil of America until the Europeans colonized it. 

But while silence and darkness thus brooded over the 
western hemisphere for more than fifty centuries, the 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 423 

eastern was the theatre of a series of movements and 
vicissitudes, constituting the substance of ancient his- 
tory, by which Providence was enunciating to mankind 
the successive primary lessons of its education, and pre- 
paring it to enter upon the career of moral and social 
advancement designed for it by nature, and which, im- 
perceptible in its early stages, has become a visibly rapid 
progress in our day, but must be seen in results far 
higher than have yet been reached, before this earth can 
reflect in undimmed lustre the glory of Him who cre- 
ated it for the abode of man, and placed him upon it to 
cultivate and adorn its surface, develope its infinite 
riches, and bring out, into the highest enjoyment and 
the brightest light, all the capacities and beauties of its 
occupants and objects. 

Before we bring the Old World to the period of con- 
tact with the New, let us pass, in brief and comprehen- 
sive enumeration, the grand events, which rise like Al- 
pine summits along the outline of its history, and mark 
the gradual adaptation of mankind for the new and 
more quickening influences which sprung into action 
when America was introduced within the circle of the 
civilization of Christendom. 

The great empires, which had first passed over the 
field of vision of inspired prophets, followed each other 
on the stage of historic reality. The successive and 
slowly advancing preliminary steps, by which a revela- 
tion of divine truth sufficient to satisfy the wants, and 
able to elevate and purify to the highest degree the na- 
ture, of the soul of man, was to be ushered in, one by 
one, took place. The lust of empire, calling to its aid 
the passions of humanity in ages of violence and igno- 
rance, had swept vast armies over the face of nations, 
and, under an overruling Hand, had stirred, and im- 
pelled, and guided the currents of power and thought. 



424 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

At length, through the agency, direct and remote, of 
these, and all the subsidiary events and influences in 
their train, the energies of intellect had become suffi- 
ciently exercised to give rise to systems of philosophy, 
and processes of mental culture and reflection, and thus 
to provide a foundation for the reception of a spiritual 
theology, and the elements of a true and absolute mo- 
rality depending upon, and embraced within it. 

While such influences had been at work over the Gen- 
tile world, how wonderful were the arrangements by 
which a suitable centre of diffusion was provided for 
the heavenly illumination! At a period far down be- 
yond the most distant glimmerings of profane history, 
a particular family was selected and led by the Divine 
Hand to a region, situated at the threshold of the three 
great continents, on a conspicuous spot, near which all 
communications of commerce, travel and war, from or 
to Europe, Asia and Africa necessarily passed. For 
wise and obvious purposes, the chosen family was there 
kept secluded from the rest of the world for centuries. 
How admirably adapted was the territory to this pur- 
pose! It was a fertile and most salubrious valley, be- 
tween ranges of mountain-barriers, rising through the 
clouds in many points, to wintry elevations of tempera- 
ture, comprising at different altitudes on its descending 
slopes, every variety of climate and production, and 
watered through its entire length by a river, rising 
among wild mountains at one extremity, expanding at 
intervals into small inland seas, and at the other extrem- 
ity not flowing, as rivers elsewhere do, into an open 
sea — for that would have defeated the design of the 
temporary seclusion of the nation — but mysteriously 
vanishing beneath the barren sands of inhospitable and 
untraversable deserts. While the Divine Wisdom re- 
quired the sequestration of that people for such a length 



CHARLES WENT WORTH UPHAM 425 

of time from the rest of the world, and their imprison- 
ment within such Hmited boundaries, its Benevolence 
selected for their residence a region containing within 
its narrow confines every variety of soil and tempera- 
ture. The Israelite, as he reclined at sultry noon be- 
neath the grateful shade of the palm and the olive, on 
the banks of the Jordan, beheld on either side, as in pan- 
oramic epitome, from the luxuriance of the warmest 
valleys to the far-off mountain pinnacles, scathed by the 
upper lightnings and gleaming in crests of perennial 
snows, all the gradations of animate and inanimate na- 
ture, as they are distributed through the latitudes of the 
globe from the torrid line to the frozen pole. 

Here, while the work of preparation was going on 
without, amidst the innumerable forms of polytheism in 
the Gentile world, the great elemental truth of the Unity 
of God was sacredly preserved until the fulness of the 
times for its universal dissemination arrived. The pur- 
poses for which the Hebrew people had been selected 
and separated were then accomplished. Temple and 
ritual, prophecy and priesthood, sacrifice and offering, 
were all consummated in the life, death, and resurrec- 
tion of Him who was to be the Light of the World. 
Judea was now ready to be released from her seclusion, 
and at this stage of the divinely arranged plan her peo- 
ple were required to go forth, and act upon, and mix 
with, the rest of the nations. In accordance with that 
principle, so signally developed in many other conjunc- 
tures of human history, the wrath of man was made to 
subserve the Providence of God. The storm of war 
burst with all its devastating and destructive horrors 
upon the Holy Land. The eagles of Rome were un- 
furled over the ruins of its City and Temple. Not one 
stone was left upon another of the walls of Jerusalem, 
and the captive people were scattered by the conqueror 



426 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

among all the nations. They carried their Scriptures, 
in whose prophetic visions and foreshadowing symbols 
the seeds of Christianity were wrapped up, with them 
into every scene of their exile, and every path of their 
wanderings. 

The wisdom of the Divine Being in the selection of 
Judea to be the centre from which the light of true reli- 
gion was to irradiate the surrounding world, was 
proved by the immediate results. During the first age 
of the church, in which Christianity attained a diffusion 
more rapid and extensive than it has in all subsequent 
centuries, it spread over a similar extent of territory 
and population, and penetrated to an equal distance, in 
Europe, Asia, and Africa. In the developments of the 
ages yet to come, when the routes of travel and inter- 
communication between the three ancient continents, 
and between America and the East, shall be laid 
through Palestine, whose scenes will thus become fa- 
miliar with all mankind, then will the Providence which 
made that the theatre of the religious history of the 
race, become justified and displayed in all its lustre and 
glory. 

It is unnecessary for me to remind you of the promi- 
nent events and influences brought to bear upon the 
condition of mankind, subsequent to the Christian reve- 
lation. The decline and fall of the Roman dominion, in- 
cluding, before it fell, the establishment of Christianity 
as the religion of the empire. The influx and commix- 
ture of vast tribes of barbarians. The rise and spread 
of the Mahomedan power, preserving affrighted Chris- 
tendom from the complete stupor into which supersti- 
tion, ignorance, and priestcraft, if aided by entire se- 
curity, would have lulled it. The Crusades, gathering 
into mighty hosts the population of States, transferring 
them by thousands and tens of thousands into new 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 427 

scenes, thus awakening in their minds fresh and stirring 
ideas, and on their return, bringing back, and scattering 
over benighted and barbarian Europe, the elements of 
oriental refinement and elegance. The amazing impulse 
given to thought and knowledge by the invention and 
use of the movable type. The opening of straight 
paths across the mighty deep by the discovery of the 
polarity of the magnetized needle, "the faithful pilot," 
as the mariners' compass has been felicitously personi- 
fied by the most eloquent of American writers,^ offer- 
ing his services without money and without price, to 
every navigator, sitting serene, steadfast, and unwear- 
ied at the helm, through all storms, and without star, 
or landmark, or plummet, steering over the widest 
oceans with unerring accuracy and absolute assurance. 
And, at last, the Reformation, breaking the lethargy of 
uniformity, in which Christendom was sleeping the 
sleep of death, and through the infinite divisions and 
conflicts of creed and practice to which it gave rise, dis- 
closing and enforcing the great vital principle of true 
reform and renovation, the rights, the claims, and the 
power of every individual soul. 

The combinations were now completed. Beneath the 
surface and in the heart of society the ingredients were 
mingling and working, whose final results will be the 
disfranchisement and elevation of humanity. But in the 
old world, the forms of oppression, superstition and 
error, had become so intertwisted and riveted to each 
other, and to the radical elements of our social nature, 
and had spread such a thick incrustation, as it were, 
over its entire surface, that the expansive force of in- 
ternal elements alone could not have thrown them off, 
without an explosion which would have prostrated in 
desolation and scattered in fragments, the whole fabric 
* Edward Everett — Orations, p. 255. 



428 NEW ENGLAKD SOCIETY ORATIONS 

o£ society. It was necessary tliat an. infitieice. co-oper- 

atiiig with, that witirin. should be brctight to bear from 
without, and then the process of amelioration would, 
at onc^ be safe and sure, the forms and monuments of 
onror and evil would melt gradually awav. and the 
structures of tnith, freedom, and righteousness rise in 
tffpfr places. 

At this moment, then, we Tvitness. bevond aU. compar- 
iscm, the most sublime occnrrence in human history. 
No one evait, wilii the exception, of course^ of those 
which belong to the sphere of revealed rehgioru in alL 
the past or future an n als of the world can approach, it. 
We bdioM the ATrmgf rty hand drawing forth, as from 
the depths of darkness and vacuity, the American con- 
tinents, and bringing^ then into electric contact and 
communication with: surcharged Europe. The ideas 
struggling into existence there, and struggling in vain, 
against the moimtain-wdght of ancient abuses, preju- 
dice, and ignorance^ and the banded power of all inter- 
ested in the thei existing state of things, were wel- 
comed to a free exercise and display on the unoccupied 
shores of America, and flourishing here rato maturity, 
have passed back again to aid in the regeneration of the 
old world. The enpire of darkness had, from the be- 
ginning, prevailed over this hemisphere. The elements 
of the world's redemption had beei imparted to the op- 
posite heuisphere. In order that they might take full 
dfect, and reiovate the entire race of man, an action 
and reaction were required to be established between 
tkese two great divisions of the earth. Europe, which 
in thigr view of the subject may be regarded as includ- 
ing the entire eastern hemisphere, and America, came 
into communication, and from tliat moment humanity 
received an impulse which, has visibly and steadily ac- 
celerated its progress. The ^ects produced by the free 



CHARLES Vi'EX'nVORTH "_~:-l-J! 
and fe^- - ' : ' — ^ ' 



are. 



■e, so- 



nents ir 



-It ever n-'-w. 



beat, which give to it:- 
alwsv? salutary " - " -. a "i^ 

the lightnirr- " - " '"^ '^^ 

storm is of : ' : ' 

the carkD^s is 

scape is refref'-r ...; _: _i- ^:: .._ 

exhCarairnr- '^'' : :'"r skv is brigirrer:' r 



ftmr is rsmdlv exDeadiag". 



ireigiii she bear?, fr " 
so ovemi5ed the wir : 

br S'3me. the raotives 
the OL?E5t at a ~t ' 
bv the cC'li'jcasts ; 



430 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

in our day as happy and prosperous a population as can 
be found in any quarter of the world, the aspect and 
conformation of the land present as unwelcome and 
desolate a spectacle as weary mariner ever looks upon. 
Reefs and shoals are strown along in front of the shore 
to forbid and repel approach. Above and beyond the 
beaches, all that can be seen are desert banks and hills of 
sand. Cheerless and dreary as it now appears, although 
crowned with light-houses and interspersed with the 
innumerable sails of a vast coasting trade and for- 
eign commerce, how dismal and disheartening the scene 
must have been to the Pilgrims, as they approached it 
amidst the storms and ice of winter! At length, after 
many days and nights spent in exploring Cape Cod and 
Barnstable Bay, in search of a safe and convenient rest- 
ing-place, they came to anchor in the harbor of Ply- 
mouth. As the boat, containing the first division of 
the passengers, put off from the side of the vessel, a 
scene was presented inexhaustibly rich, in all of visible 
and moral interest that can be needed to kindle the im- 
agination, fill the meditative mind, or awaken in the 
heart tender and admiring affections. The painter and 
the poet have already drawn inspiration from it, and it 
will forever attract and sustain the highest powers of 
their genius. 

"Wild was the day, the wintry sea 

Moaned sadly on New England's strand, 
When first the thoughtful and the free, 
Our fathers, trod the desert land."^ 

The waters, darkened by the clouds which, in that 
season, so prevailingly overhang them, — the rocky ice- 
clad coast — the islands and the main, a frozen, shelter- 
less solitude — sky, sea, shore, were all invested with 
* William Cullen Bryant. 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 431 

their most forbidding aspect. The shivering exiles 
slowly approach in their deeply laden long-boat. They 
search for a safe and convenient landing-place, and 
make their way towards a rock with a low and level sur- 
face, imbedded in the gravelly beach, and extending 
from the bank into the surf. As they leaped upon that 
rock, desolate as was the scene around them, and dark 
as was their prospect, a burden was lifted, at once, from 
their long oppressed bosoms. As the solid continent 
was felt beneath their feet, their devout hearts ascended 
in unutterable gratitude to that Divine mercy which had 
borne them over the boisterous deep, and guided them in 
that perilous season through the dangers of a coast 
which mariners approach, even now, at all seasons, with 
peculiar anxiety, and which had opened to them an asy- 
lum where their views of Christian freedom and social 
progress might be indulged without let or hindrance 
from man. But great as was their joy, fervent as their 
gratitude, and lofty and far-reaching as their faith in 
the Providence of whose great designs they were the in- 
struments, little could they foresee or imagine the lustre 
of renown which would reflect back through all subse- 
quent ages upon that hour of their experience. 

As time discloses the grand and beneficent results to 
humanity, in all climes and regions, of the colonization 
of America by enlightened, free, and Christian men — as 
the practicability of popular sovereignty and social in- 
stitutions, based upon the principle of unlimited prog- 
ress and reform, becomes more and more signally dis- 
played in America, and more and more appreciated in 
the old world, the halo of glory encircling the Pilgrim 
Fathers will brighten in the retrospect of grateful 
generations. Already is an homage rendered, and a tri- 
umph awarded them, greater than ever monarch or war- 
rior won. On each recurring anniversary their descen- 



432 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

dants, dwelling in the ancient commonwealth including 
within its limits the Rock of Plymouth, assemble in 
joyful and reverent crowds around it; and in the re- 
motest quarters of their dispersion throughout the vast 
republic, sprung from foundations which they laid, 
pressing on, as they do, among the very foremost at the 
extreme verge of our ever-expanding empire, the poster- 
ity of the Pilgrims look back with filial love and increas- 
ing interest to the day and the scene we are commemo- 
rating. The 226. of December is becoming honored 
and consecrated by public observances, at the principal 
centres of population in all parts of the Union; and it 
needs no greater insight of the future than all eyes pos- 
sess, to behold before many years have passed, the sons 
of New England gathering, as you are gathered here, 
on the return of this day, in cities whose foundations 
remain to be laid, and in capitals of States whose stars 
are yet to rise into the crowded galaxy of our flag, be- 
yond the Rocky Mountains, and on the shores of that 
western ocean, which, as the very charters of the ear- 
liest colonies witness, was the only limit the first found- 
ers of our country would recognize or brook to their 
visions of liberty and happiness for the whole continent. 

"Where the sun, with softer fires, 
Looks on the vast Pacific sleep, 
The children of the Pilgrim sires 

This hallowed day, like us, shall keep." 

Perhaps it may be expected by some, that I should re- 
count, on this occasion, the fearful sufferings, the wast- 
ing privations, the heroic endurance, and the brave 
deeds of the earliest Pilgrim colonists ; the difficulties 
they met and surmounted, and the persevering fidelity 
with which they held on, while so many of the first ad- 
venturers to America retreated from the enterprise or 



CHARLES WENT WORTH UPHAM 433 

sunk beneath its trials and exposures, to the noble pur- 
pose of securing to their descendants a permanent home 
of liberty and religion on this continent. The theme 
is both fruitful and attractive. Whoever seeks for top- 
ics of the noblest dignity or the tenderest interest, will 
find them in the chronicles that have been fortunately 
preserved of the first settlers of the shores of Massachu- 
setts Bay.^ And, indeed, all along the track of the his- 
tory of the Colonies, the brightest illustrations of per- 
sonal bravery, fortitude, and magnanimity, and of po- 
litical integrity and wisdom are thickly scattered. But 
others have treated these subjects more fully than my 
limits permit, and with such success as leaves no occa- 
sion for a repetition. Venturing to assume, therefore, 
that your own recollections of what you have heard and 
read will supply enough to bring your minds and hearts 
into sympathy with the occasion, I propose to draw, 
from the contemplation of the character and history of 
the first and the early subsequent generations of New 
England, some general considerations, which may serve 
to enable us and our successors better to fulfil the great 
purposes to which America was consecrated by the vir- 
tues, the faith, and the prayers of the Pilgrim Fathers. 
It would be impossible, in a single discourse, to do 
full justice to the great and noble denomination of men 
to which the founders of New England belonged. The 
Puritans are acknowledged by their enemies to have 
breathed the spirit of liberty into the British constitu- 
tion; and the freedom and prosperity of America are 

* Two very valuable and in- stores of his learning. The one 
teresting volumes have recently is entitled, "Chronicles of the 
been published, comprising the Pilgrim Fathers of the Col- 
most important and authorita- ony of Plymouth ;" the other 
tive documents, under the edi- "Chronicles of the First Plant- 
torial care of Rev. Alexander ers of the Colony of Massachu- 
Young, D.D., of Boston, and setts Bay." 
enriched, in the notes, with the 



434 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

the record of their glory. So great is the preponder- 
ance of their services to mankind over all the faults that 
can be charged upon them, that those who most affec- 
tionately and proudly cherish their memory fear not, 
but rejoice, to have their merits brought into discussion. 
Their errors provide the shade needful to give full 
effect to the light that beams from their virtues. Deny- 
ing myself, on the present occasion, the gratification of 
expatiating, in detail, upon the character and career of 
the Puritans, I would only observe that the monuments 
of their wisdom, heroism, and greatness tower far, far 
above all other objects of political interest, in the per- 
spective of the past, and in the spectacle of the present. 
Those monuments are the Commonwealth of England, 
with the civil wars that led to it, and the Colonization 
of New England, terminating in the establishment of 
the Republic of the United States of America. What 
description, or body of men, since the world began, has 
accomplished by mere human means, a work to be com- 
pared with this ? 

The history of the Commonwealth of England has 
never yet been adequately written. When justice shall 
have been done to the illustrious theme, it will be ac- 
knowledged that in no movement of mankind has the 
mind of a people exhibited a grander development, or 
the cause of human rights and social reform been more 
faithfully, intelligently and bravely vindicated. In the 
earnest struggles and lofty aspirations of the cham- 
pions of liberty and humanity, the profoundest depths 
of political science w^re then fathomed and explored ; 
and if it had been possible in the old world, at that pe- 
riod, for a government founded upon the principles of 
freedom, and expressing the will and sovereignty of the 
people, to have succeeded, the English Commonwealth 
would have been permanently established, and the great 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 435 

spirits who administered it, in its different stages, have 
enjoyed, from the first, what will be rendered to them 
at last — the admiration of the world. 

As it respects the monument reared by the Puritans, 
on this side of the ocean, I would only say, that the 
most condensed and summary review of the free institu- 
tions they planted, and which, protected by their cour- 
age and constancy, and deriving the principle of inex- 
tinguishable vitality from their spirit, are now flourish- 
ing, maturely developed, in republican States gathering 
under the American Union, would occupy a wider space 
than can be allowed to an anniversary address. His- 
tory, in its most elaborate and classical form, requires 
its amplest folds to embrace them ; and in this, the most 
appropriate office of history, foreign and domestic ge- 
nius are emulating each other. 

Descending from these higher and more comprehen- 
sive views, I desire to call your attention to one or two 
particular points in the example of the Pilgrim Fathers, 
which may be profitably pondered at the present time. 

One of the chief elements of their character, and 
sources of their strength and success, was their appre- 
ciation of the greatness and importance of the sphere 
which every man occupies, in his individual capacity, as 
distinguished from his relations to the State or society 
in any of its forms. The energy and influence of each 
private person, the contribution each individual may 
make to the general welfare, the might with which a 
free arm, working the will of a free spirit, is clothed, 
Vv^ithout aid from government, and in spite of the frowns 
of government, in fields of action which government 
cannot close, — this element of character was developed 
by the early colonists with more power than by any 
other community. 

The Christian revelation, by bringing all mankind 



436 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

into an equal and immediate relation to the universal 
Father, had announced the dignity of each separate 
soul. But the political institutions and social forms of 
mankind, in all nations, had been wrought by ambition, 
love of power, superstition and ignorance, into a system 
in which individual rights were entirely overlooked or 
deliberately sacrificed. The State, as such, or, as it 
really was practically, the ruling power, was every- 
thing; the People were nothing. Instead of the king 
being for the welfare of the country, the country and all 
who belonged to it were for the welfare of the king. 
Instead of the priest being for the good of the church, 
the church was for the good of the priest. The ten- 
dency of every institution and mode of social action, 
political, ecclesiastical and military was to merge the 
bulk of mankind into masses, and limit free individual 
action to monarchs, popes, and generals. The few, 
who were the heads of the State or Church, exercised 
arbitrary and unlimited sway; the vast residue of man- 
kind walked the weary round of prescribed and servile 
labors, whose fruits they were not permitted freely to 
enjoy, and from which they were forbidden to aspire. 
Their wills were enslaved, and their actions controlled 
by the influence of a despotism, operating either through 
the arbitrary edicts of irresponsible rulers, or fixed 
usages, with which long-continued and hopeless subjec- 
tion had crushed their spirits into an implicit acquies- 
cence. The Reformation had, to some extent, startled 
the masses to a perception of their rights as individuals ; 
but the fatal schemes to which its leaders lent their ears, 
pursuing the pestilent phantom of uniformity, which, 
from the beginning to this hour, has defrauded the soul 
of man of its birthright and kept the fires of persecution 
burning, again sealed the prospects of individual free- 
dom of spirit. The great discoveries of that period. 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 437 

and the stirring influences that followed in their train, 
held out, for a season, encouragement that essential re- 
forms might be effected ; but the result of the operation 
of new ideas in the civil wars of England, and of the 
struggles for the rights of mankind, as individuals, in 
other parts of the old world, even up to the present time, 
afford conclusive evidence that, if a fairer field had not 
been opened in America, the cause of the people, as such, 
could never have made effectual efforts to throw off the 
burdens fastened upon transatlantic Christendom by 
ages of feudal bondage. 

But from the moment the European colonist planted 
his foot on this continent, the energies, the rights, and 
the dignity of man, as an individual, were secured for 
ever. The necessities of his situation rendered this re- 
sult inevitable. The contributions of every hand were 
needed to perform the labors indispensable to the exist- 
ence of the company, and of every head to devise and 
conduct the means of encountering the difficulties with 
which they were surrounded. The unlimited extent of 
the territory, and the limited productiveness of the soil, 
led them to scatter over the face of the country, at some 
distance from each other in the same community, and 
to select for their townships the most fertile, and other- 
wise eligible, districts however remote from previous 
settlements. Every head of a family had obtained by 
religious illumination and faith, before he left his home 
in the old country, strong and clear conceptions of the 
sanctity and value of his own spirit, and of his dignity 
as the disciple of Him, who, in becoming the only Mas- 
ter of the soul, had redeemed it from all subjection to 
human authority. The reception of the grace of God 
into his heart, of which his speculative theology and 
practical piety both gave evidence, imparted to him an 
inward sense of equality with the highest potentates of 



438 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

earth. He, who looked forward with calm assurance 
to a heavenly crown of glory and immortality, would 
have felt no abasement in the presence of kings. After 
his establishment in the wilds of America, he surveyed 
the broad acres which were all his own, and his exclu- 
sively, unencumbered by feudal or baronial vassalage, 
subject to no tribute, taxation, or service — as far as his 
eye could reach into the depths of the forest, to the sum- 
mits of the hills, along the courses of the streams, and 
over the bosom of the ocean, there was none to dispute 
his possession, or interfere with his movements, or in 
any way restrain or affect the exercises of his will or 
his faculties. Such a person, thus situated, could not 
but have constantly exulted in his freedom, and have 
felt with every pulsation his power and his dignity as 
a man. 

The first settlers of America, by the very act of their 
emigration, proclaimed their sense of the supreme im- 
portance of man as an individual — of his superiority in 
that aspect to all the properties he possesses as a mem- 
ber of political society, as the subject and citizen of a 
State. They had long felt government only in its pres- 
sure, and had cherished the idea of a removal beyond 
its reach, whatever amount of suffering that removal in 
other respects might occasion, as the greatest of bless- 
ings. "Open to us," they exclaimed, "a refuge from 
civil and ecclesiastical oppression, and we will fly to it, 
no matter how fiercely the wide ocean opens its mouth 
to swallow us, or with what terrors the wintry wilder- 
ness may threaten us." And when, on arranging their 
condition in America, they found it necessary to con- 
struct a government for the preservation of order and 
justice, and for the regular administration of the ordi- 
nances and public services of religion, they carefully 
sought to reserve to themselves as much power as pos- 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 439 

sible, depositing as large a proportion as they could of 
what it was absolutely necessary to delegate, within a 
sphere so limited as to be under their own eyes, in the 
parish and the town, and transacting in primary assem- 
blies as far as practicable their own public business. 

It is true, that, misled by the spirit still disastrously 
prevalent, they soon began to employ the enginery of 
State and Church to work out Utopian schemes of re- 
form — by legislation and discipline, encroaching upon 
private rights, and invading personal freedom at every 
point where the slighest evil was supposed to lurk. But 
these attempts to subdue the individual character into 
conformity with standards set up by authority, were 
ultimately found to be vain and fruitless. The circum- 
stances of their situation, already sketched, the ideas at 
the foundation of their religious faith and experience, 
and the systems of education they established pre- 
vailed over all counteracting influences, and gave a de- 
velopment and force to individual intellect and will, to 
every original peculiarity and tendency of genius; of 
which the results are seen in the wonderful progress and 
present prosperity of the States they founded, and in the 
enterprise, energy, ingenuity, and success of their de- 
scendants wherever scattered. The power of character, 
growing out of this free development of the turn of 
mind of every individual, and the feeling connected 
with it, that each one may and must choose his own 
course, open his own path, and determine his own con- 
dition, has made New England impregnable, and cov- 
ered her comparatively stubborn and sterile soil with 
abundance. This is the secret magic by which her sons 
command success and wealth wherever they wander. 
The States included under that name have contracted 
limits, and are subject to many disadvantages — on the 
expanding map, or in the multiplying census of the 



440 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

Union, they may appear feeble and insignificant, but 
their prosperity is sure and will be perpetual — no power 
of party — no sectional prejudice — no error of policy — 
no injustice of government can permanently or essen- 
tially check the career of progress in wealth and civili- 
zation, along which the energies of individual inge- 
nuity, enterprise, intelligence, and industry have from 
the beginning impelled them. 

When this force of individual character, this con- 
sciousness of inherent power, is once brought into exer- 
cise, and becomes habitual, entering into the frame of 
the mind, then is man clothed with his true strength. 
Obstacle, peril and suffering, serve only to reveal in the 
heart, sources of energy, hidden and undreamed-of be- 
fore. The great master of the drama and of human 
nature expounds the principle. 

"The fire i' the flint 



Shows not, till it be struck." 

One of the most accomplished of the Latin classics 
declares the effect which trial and difficulty exert in 
bringing out this mighty force of character, "Adversa 
magnos probcnf' — all history and observation demon- 
strate it. The mind, thrown upon its own resources, 
and summoning them resolutely to the effort, rises with 
every emergency, and confronts and surmounts all that 
can be brought against it. Such was the discipline of 
the early New England character. Cold, hunger, dis- 
ease, desolation, grappled with it in vain, at the begin- 
ning. Neither the tomahawk nor war-whoop of the 
Indian, nor all the terrors which hung over their de- 
fenceless hamlets, could subdue hearts armed with this 
inward strength. It grew with constant and healthful 
vigor through all vicissitudes. The neglect of the mo- 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 441 

ther-country could not cast a shade dark or damp 
enough to wither it. The most violent storms of its 
anger could not break it. Charters were torn away by 
the ruthless hand of arbitrary power, and every re- 
source of despotism was exhausted to curb and crush it. 
But all was in vain. The people, severally and univer- 
sally, had realized their rights, and their power, as 
men; and a determination to advance their own condi- 
tion, to retain and enlarge their privileges, thus per- 
vading the entire population, made them superior to all 
local disadvantages, and triumphant over all opposition. 
It placed their prosperity beyond the reach of power or 
fortune. So long as the arm of the settler could wield 
an axe, or his hand cast a vote; so long as the district 
school-house opened its doors to impart the knowledge 
and the mental culture, enabling him to understand and 
maintain his rights, or the village church lifted its spire 
into the heavens to remind him of that immortal ele- 
ment, which, glowing in his breast, placed him on a 
level with the highest of his fellow men, it would be 
impossible to enslave him, or prevent his progress. 

It is the great advantage of free institutions, when 
aided by suitable provisions of education, that they give 
opportunity for natural diversities to display them- 
selves. No permanent castes hang their dead weights 
on the community. Each individual, as he enters the 
scenes of active life, instead of being compelled to walk 
in the same path with his ancestors, chooses his own 
occupation, marks out a new course for himself, and by 
a special combination, adapts the voluntary conditions 
of his existence to his own peculiar tastes and faculties. 
This impulsive projection of each individual, according 
to his peculiar nature, into the engagements and strug- 
gles of business and of life in all its forms; this self- 
originating, and self-stimulating earnestness of pursuit, 



442 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

taking effect upon a whole people, is well worthy of the 
study of the philosophic mind. We sometimes hear it 
spoken of with a sneer. The determined assurance, and 
ingenious contrivances, and indefatigable perseverance 
by which New Englanders push their fortunes in the 
world, in particular instances, may justly excite ridi- 
cule, contempt, or aversion; but regarded in a compre- 
hensive and general aspect, as a pervading and dis- 
tinctive element of national character, this spirit of 
enterprise rises into greatness, and becomes truly impos- 
ing. It secures perpetual and boundless progress. It 
diffuses prosperity. It evokes all latent power. It 
silently, and by a most benignant process, wins for a 
nation nobler victories, and a greater dominion than 
the mightiest armies could have achieved. 

It was not a mere personal boast, but the authentic 
and genuine utterance of this unconquerable and all 
conquering spirit of individual enterprise and energy, 
when, a short time since, a distinguished merchant, 
himself a most signal illustration, in his history and for- 
tune, of the power of such a spirit to command wealth 
and influence, in an argument on the protective policy 
of the country, speaking in the name of the industry of 
New England, said to the national legislators, "alter, 
reduce, destroy the tariff ; pass wdiatever laws you may, 
adopt whatever policy you choose, we zvill make 
money." Surely, the histor)'' of the action of govern- 
ment upon the labor, business, and capital of New Eng- 
land, through the entire period of its dependence on the 
mother-country, and I may say, without involving my- 
self in party passions, up to this very hour, bears one 
continued triumphant testimony to the superiority of 
energy and intelligence, pervading a people, to all the 
powers that government can possibly exert. If when 
their industry, bravery, hardihood, and skill, in all the 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 443 

multiplied forms and channels of foreign commerce, 
were reaping harvests of wealth on every sea, you closed 
their ports by embargo and war, they at once trans- 
ferred the scene of their achievements. Forests van- 
ished before them; new regions poured forth riches 
from their fresh and unexhausted bosoms; and every- 
where the sounds of the water-wheel, the trip-hammer, 
and the steam-engine were heard mingling with the 
voices of nature and of men. If, after having com- 
pelled them to give this direction to their capital and 
enterprise, reversing the policy of your laws, you at- 
tempt to crush the manufacturing and mechanical inter- 
ests of such a people, their ingenuity and energy, consti- 
tuting an inexhaustible resource, because one to which 
all severally contribute spontaneously, perpetually and 
to the whole extent of their power, will probably be 
found able to elude the blow, and make it subserve the 
very objects it was designed to injure; but if driven 
from their mills and workshops, they will again spread 
the wings of commerce, and despite of your utmost 
efforts, place themselves ahead of all competitors on the 
tide of prosperity. 

This principle of individual intelligence, ingenuity, 
and resolution pervading the people of New England, is 
covering the land with its monuments and trophies. In 
every form in which skill can combine with labor, in 
mechanism, in the infinite applications of science and 
processes of art, in patient researches into nature, and 
in all departments of mental activity; in solitary ad- 
venture, or in associated companies, religious, moral, 
political, or financial — directing the resources of multi- 
tudes with the accuracy and efficiency of a single intelli- 
gence and will — it is working incalculable effects. It 
turns barrenness into fertility, straightens the winding 
and crooked paths, smooths down every rugged ob- 



444 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

stacle, accelerates speed, reduces cost, multiplies busi- 
ness, creates wealth, draws useless rivers from their an- 
cient beds into navigable and secure artificial channels, 
awakens the hum of inventive, animated, and well-re- 
warded industry along the banks of every descending 
stream, opens with its touch the bosom of the earth to 
give forth its mineral treasures, converts the ice of our 
northern lakes into a most welcome article of world- 
wide commerce, and sinking its quarries into the bare 
and desolate mountains, manipulates the shapeless gran- 
ite into forms of architectural grace and beauty, and 
spreads them in classic colonnades and lofty structures, 
along the streets of distant cities. 

Sons of New England ! your ancestors relied upon 
the power of their own arms, upon their own ingenuity, 
skill, and personal industry and enterprise. They never 
looked for the chief blessings of life to the govern- 
ment. They did not expect that freedom, prosperity or 
happiness was to be secured to their posterity by legis- 
lation, or any form of political administration, but they 
planted the seed which was to bear the precious fruits, 
in the awakened, enlightened, and invigorated mental 
energies of their descendants. For this they provided 
their system of universal education; and if you would 
be worthy of your ancestry, you must do likewise. 
Look not to legislation, or to official patronage, or to 
any public resources or aids to make yourselves or your 
children prosperous, powerful and happy. But trust to 
your and their energy of character and enlightened 
minds, and persevering enterprise and industry. Cher- 
ish these traits, and they will work out, in the future, 
the same results, as in the past. The earth will every- 
where blossom beneath you. You will be sure of exert- 
ing your rightful influence in every community. You 
will be placed beyond the reach of injustice and oppres- 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 445 

sion. Rash and weak counsels may involve the foreign 
relations of the confederacy; short-sighted or perverse 
legislation may do its worst to embarrass your interests ; 
but if you resolutely apply your own resources of in- 
dustry, skill, and enterprise to circumstances as they 
rise, you will be able to turn them to your advantage, 
and the great essential of democratic sovereignty will 
be guaranteed to you, the pursuit and the attainment of 
individual happiness and prosperity. 

Another feature in the character of the Pilgrim Fa- 
thers, to which I wish particularly to turn your atten- 
tion, is their trust in an overruling and co-operating 
Providence. In their records, journals, and other writ- 
ings, no sentiment has greater prominence than this. It 
was an abiding and a practical principle. It imparted 
habitual contentment, gratitude, courage, patience, and 
assurance of ultimate success. In the greater part of 
their number, it was not a mere speculative faith, but a 
personal experience. 

While the mind, in the present state of being, is en- 
closed in these material bodies, with no capacity to at- 
tain to communicable knowledge beyond the reach of 
the perceptions of sense and the deductions to be de- 
rived from them, one person will never be able to pro- 
nounce absolutely upon the manner or the degree to 
which the soul of another person is cognizant of God. 
We know, or by a proper use of our faculties of con- 
sciousness and self -inspection, can know, how clearly 
and how high our own souls have risen into the pres- 
ence and communion of God. The observation of life, 
if not the happy experience of our own spirits, gives 
evidence that virtue, in the highest or indeed the only 
true sense, as founded upon an habitual and spontaneous 
recognition of duty to God, brings the heart of man into 
an immediate relation to the Divine Being, imparts to 



446 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

it of the very fullness of the Deity, and lifts it into a 
heavenly frame. The exaltation of character produced 
by such virtue is as truly as beautifully described by the 
poet, whose own genius was translated, by the contem- 
plation of God, into the divinest nature : — 

"Love Virtue, she alone is free, 
She can teach you how to climb 
Higher than the sphery clime. 
Or, if Virtue feeble were, 
Heaven itself would stoop to her." 

This elevation of the habitual promptings of the ordi- 
nary actions and familiar duties of daily life into the 
sphere of piety and faith, into a constant, living, trust- 
ing connection with God, the form of virtue which Mil- 
ton describes, must be allowed, even by those who sym- 
pathize the least with them, to have marked, to an 
eminent degree, the character of the Pilgrim Fathers. 
If ever men gave presumptive evidence of habitual 
communion with the Most High, and reference to him 
in action and in conversation, they did. 

"In those days," said one of their number, looking 
back, after the lapse of nearly half a century, to the time 
when, in his youth, he participated in the privations and 
perils of the first settlement of the country, "In those 
days God did cause his people to trust in Him, and to 
be contented with mean things." And after alluding 
to the more comfortable and secure condition of the 
generation that had risen around him, and mentioning 
several particulars in which their situation was much 
"better," he asked, "have you better hearts than your 
forefathers had ?" * 

That which gave the forefathers "better hearts," was, 

' Captain Roger Clap's Memoirs. Young's Chronicles 
of Massachusetts, p. 353. 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 447 

as he stated it, "Trust in God." They rejoiced in the 
shelter of an overruhng Providence, and, in the mean- 
ness and sufferings of their state, they looked forward 
with glad exultation and habitual exhilaration of soul, 
and with as absolute a vision as ever illuminated in- 
spired prophet, to glorious results, one day to be evolved, 
for the reformation of Christendom and the advance- 
ment of mankind, from the work whose small begin- 
nings they had been selected to conduct. 

I need not enumerate the occasions in their history, 
or the features of their usages and institutions, which 
strikingly display this sentiment. I am not affirming 
more than all acquainted with the annals of the Ameri- 
can Colonies will promptly corroborate, when I state 
that, without its influence pervading their counsels, and 
clothing their arms with its invincible strength, not one 
of the great struggles for liberty, of which the Revolu- 
tion was the closing act, would have been successful, or 
attempted. 

At several periods the colonies persevered, in assert- 
ing their rights, and confronting arbitrary power, when 
they were utterly destitute of all human means of de- 
fence, or resistance. In such cases they relied upon the 
interposition of Providence, with the same security with 
which a general, when the tide of battle fluctuates, re- 
poses on his reserved legions. They did not feel au- 
thorised, because they were temporarily overthrown, to 
compromise with the enemies of their liberty, or by any 
capitulation, surrender the cause. They had an assur- 
ance that Providence was on their side, and they felt 
that it would be treachery to their Almighty ally for 
them to strike the flag of freedom. This trust in God 
nailed it to the mast ; and there its folds were often seen 
floating in the heavens, when the last of its brave de- 
fenders had fallen in the fight. The history of the 



448 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

world presents no spectacle more sublime than the he- 
roic and devout confidence, w-ith which, when no longer 
able to lift a hand in the cause of liberty and right, they 
left the issue to their DiAnne Protector. 

Five years after the charter of the Colony of Massa- 
chusetts Ba}^ had been brought over by "NMnthrop. when 
the entire population consisted of a few infant ^^llages 
and scattered hamlets, information was received that 
their enemies in the mother-countr}^ had succeeded in 
obtaining the appointment of a commission, at the head 
of which were the tv^^o Arch-Bishops, with authority to 
regulate the plantations of New England, to establish 
the national church on the ruins of Independent Con- 
gregationalism, to rescind the Charter, to overthrow the 
government, and to impose arbitrarj^ laws — ^the colonists 
rose in resistance, few and feeble as they were, \\nth as 
much promptitude and determination as they did when 
numbering millions, more than a centur}^ and a quarter 
afterv^-ards, on the imposition of the duty upon stamps 
and teas. They erected fortifications, raised a beacon 
light on the highest eminence in Boston, to give the 
alarm on the approach of the Commissioners or their 
agents, and forbidding the circulation of brass far- 
things, ordained that musket balls should take their 
place in the currency and exchanges of the people. But 
well knowing that their utmost strength would be un- 
availing against the power of the throne, they consulted, 
as was their custom in cases of extremit}^ the ministers, 
in reference to their dut\^ in the last resort, and the an- 
swer was — '^Ve ought to defend our la-wful posses- 
sions, if we are able; if not, to avoid and protract" — 
the idea of a voluntary submission was never tolerated 
for a moment. Again, a quarter of a century after- 
wards, the governor of New York, writing concerning 
them, said, "The colony of Boston remains constant to 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 449 

its old maxims of a free State, dependent on none but 
God." At length, in 1683, the long deferred blow was 
struck. The Charter, under whose benignant shelter 
the liberties of Massachusetts had been rooted and had 
grown up, and which had once been bravely recovered 
by the people rising in open and successful rebellion, 
was torn for ever from their tenacious grasp. The deed 
was accomplished, and there was no hope left. They 
were urged by all the arguments and persuasions that 
could be addressed to their helplessness, their despair, 
and their worldly interests, to acquiesce in the pro- 
ceedings of the government, and, making a virtue of 
necessity, to obtain, by a voluntary surrender, as favor- 
able terms as possible. And what was the answer of 
the representatives of the people to these solicitations? 
"The civil liberties of New England," say they, "are 
part of the inheritance of our fathers ; and shall we give 
that inheritance away? Is it objected that we shall be 
exposed to great sufferings? Better suffer than 
SIN. It is better to trust the God of our fathers, than 
to put confidence in princes. If we suffer because we 
dare not comply with the will of men, against the will 
of God, we suffer in a good cause, and shall be ac- 
counted martyrs in the next generation, and at the great 
day." Upon full consideration, and after an extended 
debate, breathing such sentiments as these, the question 
was put to vote, and the decision stands recorded in 
these words, "The deputies consent not," 

This spirit was, if possible, still more boldly dis- 
played by Connecticut, a few years afterwards, when 
temporarily crushed down by the same arbitrary power. 
The historian of the United States thus tells the story — 

"Andros found the assembly in session, and demanded 
the surrender of its Charter. The brave Governor 
Treat pleaded earnestly for the cherished patent, which 



450 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

had been purchased by sacrifices and martyrdoms, and 
was endeared by halcyon days. The shades of evening 
descended during the prolonged discussion ; an anxious 
crowd of farmers had gathered to witness the debate. 
The Charter lay on the table. Of a sudden, the lights 
are extinguished ; and, as they are rekindled, the Char- 
ter had disappeared. William Wadsworth, of Hart- 
ford, stealing noiselessly through the opening crowd, 
concealed the precious parchment in the hollow of an 
oak, which was older than the colony, and is yet stand- 
ing to confirm the tale." ^ 

This heroic procedure is recognised, at once, in its 
sublimity, when read, in its true interpretation, as ex- 
pressive of unquestioning trust in the favor and interpo- 
sition of Heaven. The concealment and preservation 
of the Charter, was, in itself, the declaration of an as- 
surance that, as a few short years disclosed, an over- 
ruling Providence would restore its original authority, 
and renew, with increase, the privileges that flowed 
from it. When the sacred instrument, on the recur- 
rence of happier times, was taken from its hiding-place, 
it was, as the historian informs us, "discolored, but not 
effaced," and the liberties it secured to that happy com- 
monwealth, were never again overthrown, but having 
been consecrated by the noblest sacrifices and services of 
her sons, in the councils and on the battle-fields of the 
Union, are now imperishable and impregnable. 

As I have before observed, this trust in God, consti- 
tuted, in the founders of New England, the strength of 
their hearts, and if, at the close of the first generation, 
an aged survivor apprehended that the heart of the peo- 
ple had lost some of the strength it derived from this 
source, there is still more reason to fear it now. 

* History of the Colonization of the United States by George 
Bancroft. Vol. II., p. 432. 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 451 

It is, I think, the great error and fault of our times 
and country, that but Httle reliance is placed on the 
over-ruling and co-operating agency of God, and but 
little room allowed for it in the calculations and pro- 
jects of men. The philanthropists and reformers of the 
age, especially, seem to be unmindful of Providential 
agency. They, as well as the politicians, speak and act, 
as though the salvation of mankind depended upon the 
adoption of certain measures of theirs, and the cause of 
human liberty and progress rested mainly on the suc- 
cess of their schemes and efforts. Indeed, there is a too 
general, if not an almost universal, tendency to look to 
modifications of government, acts of legislation, and 
associated movements, as the sole means of promoting 
the welfare of communities. Men allow themselves to 
identify the cause of liberty and righteousness with fa- 
vorite notions and projects, and, having come to the 
conclusion that they must have their way or all will be 
lost, pursue their purposes with a fanatical, overbearing 
and unscrupulous spirit 

The oppressions and persecutions with which man- 
kind have been afflicted from the beginning have 
sprung, not from malignity or cruelty, but from the 
fatal persuasion that the welfare and redemption of the 
race are inseparably connected with the prevalence of 
some particular service, or creed, or government. The 
same cause produces, as far as circumstances allow, the 
same effect now. The theologian when he witnesses 
the decline of any of his own favorite dogmas, feels that 
the rock, on which the Savior planted his church, is 
crumbling beneath it. The politician, when the elec- 
tions have terminated in the overthrow of his party and 
the access to power of his opponents, sinks into despair 
of the Republic. The philanthropist, when the particu- 
lar plan he has long been urging upon the public, as 



45 2 XEW EXGLAXD SOCIETY OR-\TIOXS 

the only adequate means of ameliorating the condition 
and removing the wrongs of his fellow men, is discred- 
ited and discarded, is too apt to abandon his hopes of 
humanit}% and lose his faith as well as his temper. The 
element in which tlie}^ are all deficient, is an abiding, in- 
telligent, steadfast assurance, that God, as well as they, 
is at work, reforming and blessing the world. Instead 
of assuming, as they attempt to do, the entire command 
of events, if the}^ would but pause, from time to time, 
and trace the steps of the AU-wise and Omnipotent dis- 
poser, and await with serene and cheerful confidence the 
movements of the Divine agency, a path of most effi- 
cient and benignant action would be opened to them, 
and their efforts be crowned with sure and permanent 
success. 

The Providence of God over the moral world, on 
which our fathers rested their chief hope, and the belief 
of which was to them an inexhaustible fountain of 
strength, courage, and patience, is more signally dis- 
played to us than it was to them. The intermediate 
experience of the nations, and the increased illumina- 
tions of science, have disclosed the laws which control 
the M'elfare of associated men, as well as of individuals, 
with a clearness and certaint}' not vouchsafed to former 
ages. In those constant and steadfast laws, rather than 
in an)'' extraordinary' phenomena, we recognize the 
Providence of God — in them we behold his hand work- 
ing the issues of his love. 

Such is our speculative faith. Allow me to present 
an illustration of the manner in which it ought to be 
practically applied. 

Labor, in its multiplex and infinite forms, operating 
with the instruments, and on the condition of matter or 
of mind, is the great creative principle of private and 
public wealth, prosperit}^ and refinement. AA^hen it acts 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 453 

under the guidance of skill and intelligence — when it 
obeys the promptings of a free spirit — when the arm of 
the laborer is invigorated by a personal interest in the 
results of his labor, it may with truth be said, that it 
conquers all things. It is clothed with strength which 
never wearies, and to which nothing is impossible. 
Nature and life become its willing and rejoicing tribu- 
taries. The earth blossoms in its brightest beauty, and 
teems with its most abundant bounties wherever labor is 
intelligent and free. 

But where the laborer is not a freeman, nor enlight- 
ened by education, nor personally interested in the prod- 
ucts of his toil, a blight and a barrenness, poverty and 
want, are sure to spread over the land, no matter how 
great its physical resources, either in the muscular 
strength and endurance of its people, or in the original 
fertility of its soil. 

This indissoluble connection of the highest profitable- 
ness, with the freedom and intelligence of labor, is a 
law of God's moral government — or it is, to speak 
more accurately, one of the ordinary and established 
methods in which the Divine Providence visibly con- 
trols the progress and condition of humanity. 

The entire surface, and whole history, of the world, 
display the perpetual and irresistible operation of this 
law. It solves all the problems which the fortunes and 
fates of nations present. Take the case, for instance, 
of Ireland. A spot more lovely or more favored by na- 
ture is not to be found on the face of the globe. Its 
climate healthful and inspiring — its scenery most beau- 
tiful and variegated — its soil fertile in every variety of 
essential produce — its inhabitants brave, hardy, indus- 
trious, and capable of continued toil to a degree never 
surpassed, and partaking, as national and almost uni- 
versal characteristics, of the very soul of humor, of in- 



454 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OR.\TIONS 

exhaustible cheerfulness, of the warmest affections, and 
of the brig-htest intellect. But almost from its first ap- 
pearance on the field of history, it has arrested the anx- 
ious and compassionate attention of benevolent hearts, 
to the convulsions and suffering's of its population. At 
this Terr moment, the piteous and d3-ing outcries of 
famine mingled with the appalling shouts and execra- 
tions of mobs of desperate men, come to us with every 
communication from the other side of the Atlantic. I 
need not recount the efforts and struggles which have, 
to this hour, been made to redeem that Island from 
wretchedness. Eloquence has lavished its richest and 
sublimes! resources of tender persuasion and animating 
encouragement and terrific denimciation. Patriotism, 
in all its forms, has offered itself up. The wisdom of 
legislators and ministers of state has been exercised in 
vain. Popular excitement in vast assemblages, wide- 
spread associations, and universal agitation have been 
brought to bear. But the evil has not been overcome, 
or even reduced. The remedy is to be found in the rev- 
erent application of that law of Providence to which I 
am now adverting. As, when the chemist brings two 
substances into contact the mysterious energies of oc- 
cult nature instantly evolve striking results — so let 
those, in whose hands are the destinies of Ireland, rec- 
ognizing the Divine Law, by which prosperity is made 
to spring from enlightened, free, and interested indus- 
try, supply the conditions, leaving God to work out the 
result Establish the district school, and allow the la- 
borer to acquire a personal and permanent interest in 
the soil he tills. Do this, and you do all that man need 
or can do. God will do the rest He will spread peace 
2md plent}- over its surface, and the Green Isle of the 
Ocean will bloom in beauty, and reflect back from its 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 455 

landscape as bright a radiance as has ever glowed from 
the genius of its orators and poets. 

The subject of labor, particularly, as exhibited in the 
servile population of a portion of our own country, is 
attracting absorbing attention at the present time. I 
am aware of the prejudices that are prone to arise 
against any one who ventures to discuss it in an address 
to a mixed assembly; but as I am confident that the 
public good requires that it should be presented to the 
consideration of the people generally in the light re- 
flected upon it by the law of Providence now under our 
contemplation; I feel constrained not to shrink from 
the opportunity, and the duty of subjecting it to that 
light. 

For many years we have seen a portion of our im- 
mediate fellow-citizens arraying themselves into asso- 
ciations, and resorting to the machinery and expedients 
of political parties, for the purpose of bringing the legis- 
lative action of the country to bear against this species 
of labor, and compel its abolition by legal enactments 
and alterations in the letter of the constitution. On 
the other hand, we see those who imagine themselves 
interested in its continuance, losing the propriety of 
their judgment under the irritation into which they 
have permitted themselves to be kindled, banding to- 
gether for its preservation, wielding with a temper, such 
as affrighted despotism elsewhere manifests towards 
those who threaten its overthrow, the weapons of legal 
and illegal violence against all who question its utility 
or righteousness, rendering the very discussion of it 
penal and perilous to the life, struggling to spread it 
over new members of the confederacy, and actually 
plunging the Union into bloody and destructive war, to 
conquer from a neighboring nation boundless regions 



456 XEW EXGLAXD SOCIETY ORATIONS 

of territory for the pnrpose of extending this form 
of labor. Keeping- my eye fixed upon the operations of 
Providence, I partake not in the apprehensions of one of 
these descriptions of persons ; and look upon the efforts 
of the other with an assured conviction of their impo- 
tence. On the one side I see men striving with their 
puny arms and frail passions to accomplish that which 
God, in his onmipotence, is accomplishing by processes 
which neither need, nor are aided by their noisy outcries 
and convulsive agitations, and on the other side I behold 
: ^ and rulers contending against the law> of 

1-.- ;: High, and striving, with efforts as -^-ain and 

absurd as would be human combinations to delay the 
progress of the seasons, to extend and perpetuate over 
this fair and glorious continent an institution into 
whose very vitals He has inserted the ineradicable ele- 
ments of decay and dissolutioiL 

If any one demands evidence to justify this view of 
the subject, lei him fioat down rivers that divide regions 
where, on the one hand, labor is free, and, on the other, 
jaraiyzed by bondage — on one shore achieving its tri- 
umphs, under the stimulus of personal inter^t, with the 
strength thai resides in a freeman's arm. and with the 
lights of sk i7i and inrei'igence. and on the other, drag- 
ging its own weight after it, moving whh reluctant 
steps, and requiring constant superintendence, guidance 
and compulsion. On one bank, multipiying millions are 
rearing at frequent intervals, queen-like cities, and by 
spontaneous and gladsome toils and enlightened inge- 
nuity and perseA-^erance. imparting tC' the yielding and 
grateful soil renewed supplies of richness and fertility — 
on the other, waste, and neglecL and exhaustion, are 
spreading their mdldew innuence. Such a river, wiii 
the contrasted scenes on its opposite landscape, be- 
comes vocal with the declaration that the verv earth 



CHARLES WENT WORTH UPHA^l 457 

itself loves and. blesses freedom, and crowns with honor 
and prosperity the intelligent labor which owns it 

An inspection of the map of the United States dis- 
plays the unrivalled natural advantages of Virginia. 
The ocean embraces it in wide bays, and noble rivers. 
The air of heaven flows over it in most balmy and salu- 
brious breezes. Alluv-ial mra.dows, swelling uplands, 
green and lovely intervals, romantic and noble moun- 
tains, diversify its surface which extends beyond the 
simmiit ridge of the Atlantic States, and admits it 
to a participation of the benefits of the valley of 
the great \Vest, whose rivers fertilize its interior 
boundary. In extent of territory, in natural produc- 
tiveness, in the intellectual energies of its freehold- 
ers, and in its ancestral treasures of wisdom and pa- 
triotism, the Old Dominion has no superior in this 
confederacy. Under the census of 1820, the ratio of 
representation in Congress was fixed at 40,000. popu- 
lation being computed according to the provisions of 
the Constitution, and \^irginia was entitled to 22 mem- 
bers. By the same apportionment, the State of Xew 
York was entitled to 34 members. Under the census of 
1840, the ratio of representation was fixed at 70.680. 
Xew York retains the same ntmiber as under the cen- 
sus of 1820, namely, 34, while Virginia has gone down 
to 15 ! a loss of nearly one-third of her political power 
in 20 years I How long will it be before her patriotic 
and enlightened statesmen will return to their senses on 
this subject, and following the counsels of Jefferson. 
bravelv meet the question, on its merits, and revive the 
wasting energies of their people and their soil ? 

It is now twenty-five years since the American con- 
federacy was convulsed to its centre, and the govern- 
ment threatened with dissolution, on the admission of 
the territory of Missouri to the Union. The party in 



458 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

Congress, resolved upon allowing the institution of 
slavery to exist in that State, finally prevailed. Look- 
ing at the progress and condition of Ohio, and the other 
States which have grown up under the celebrated Ordi- 
nance of 1787, and considering the natural resources 
and advantages of Missouri, it can scarcely be doubted 
that if it had been consecrated to free labor, it would, 
before this, have overflowed in prosperity, and other 
States have been seen advancing into the circle of the 
Union beyond its remotest borders. Now what are the 
facts? In his recent annual message, the Governor of 
that State, in all the deliberateness and solemnity of an 
official announcement, declares, "With our rich soil, 
and genial climate, we are not a prosperous and thriv- 
ing people;" and plainly, with faithful boldness, ac- 
counts for the failure. "We depend," says he, "on 
physical labor, and reject the superior advantages of 
mental labor. We depend on brute force, and reject 
the superior advantages of skill and science." 

With such demonstrations, and they might easily be 
indefinitely multiplied, will it be possible for our coun- 
trymen, in any section of the Union, much longer to 
keep themselves blind to the law of Providence, thus 
announcing itself, like the handwriting of God on the 
walls of Belshazzar's palace, in letters of light and of 
fire? 

But, however it may be with others, may the sons of 
New England ever behold and confide in it. Your fa- 
thers felt an assurance, founded, in them, upon faith 
alone, that God was with them, and that he would, at 
last, give a glorious fulfilment to the hopes they had 
cherished, of freedom, happiness, and righteousness, for 
their descendants, for their country, and for mankind. 
What they beheld in faith, we behold in vision. We 
see prosperity, wealth, progress, and happiness, such as 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 459 

the world never witnessed, and philosophers have scarce 
dreamed of before, flowing in the train of freedom, in- 
telligence and industry. Let us recognize in it the law 
of Providence, and the hand of God; and let us never 
allow a doubt or a fear to come over our hearts in refer- 
ence to the cause of liberty and humanity. 

I would earnestly press these considerations upon 
those of our fellow citizens who are endeavoring to im- 
part to the whole body of the people the panic to which 
they have yielded up their own minds, on the subject of 
Slavery. They tell us that its roots are sinking deeper, 
and its baleful shadow falling broader over the conti- 
nent. They point to the new States that have brought 
their contributions to sustain it to the houses of Con- 
gress and the electoral colleges of the Union. They are 
filled with terror at the acquisition, by invasion and con- 
quest, of boundless territories, to be occupied by the in- 
stitution, and to give an interminable preponderance to 
the political power of which it is the basis and the bond. 

I would urge and implore all such persons, to turn 
from the contemplation of the miserable machinations 
of sectional politicians, who in their folly and blindness, 
are endeavoring to employ the power of our government 
to accomplish this purpose, and to lift their eyes to that 
august Providence, which is steadily and surely baf- 
fling their plans, and by its immutable laws, securing 
to free and enlightened labor the dominion of the earth. 
Instead of being terrified and irritated, at what men, 
and parties, and earthly rulers are vainly attempting, 
and spreading the unbelieving and malign infection 
among our fellow citizens, let us, when the Almighty is 
so visibly stretching forth his own arm, "leave him," 
as one of the greatest of the Puritans said, "alone to 
govern the world;" not interposing our agency unless 
in methods subsidiary to his. Let us stand back, as it 



460 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

were, in reverent silence, and rejoicing assurance, and 
witness the movements of our God, as he goes forth in 
those subhme elemental laws of his moral government 
by whose resistless energy he is remo\4ng the obstruc- 
tions in the social and political world, which have here- 
tofore checked the prevalence of liberty, justice, and 
happiness among men. The history of nations, and es- 
pecialh^ the histor}- and present condition of our own 
countr\% displa}^ the operation of those laws, and con- 
fiding in their continued operation, let us look forward, 
with certaintj% to their triumphs in the future. 

And while we thus trust to the Pro\'idence of God to 
remove this great evil, let us do our part, in co-operation 
and subser\-iency to him, in rendering more efficient 
the agency he emplo5'-s. Let us give our influence, and 
efforts, to promote the circulation of knowledge, to en- 
courage freedom of spirit, enterprise and industr}^, and 
to impart to our fellow-men, and confinn in our own 
hearts, the truths of religion, and the sentiments of 
piet}^ which clothe the spirit -w^th a strength from God. 
\\'hen the feet of tlie Pilgrims first struck the Rock of 
Plymouth, these elements of character — sources of the 
world's regeneration — gushed forth from it. They 
were the living waters that sustained our fathers in the 
wilderness, and tliey will at length fertilize and gladden 
the whole continent. 

Freedom and enterprise are swelling -wnth a rapidity 
no calculation can follow, the millions which overflow 
the boundaries of the north-western States. They vsill 
bring into the bosom of the republic more new States on 
the slopes of the Stony Mountains, than could be carv^ed 
out of the whole of Mexico. They will forth-wnth, 
strangely confounding the hopes of some, preoccupy the 
grand and beautiful regions already conquered by our 
gallant armies. The climate, soil, and all the fea- 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 461 

tures of that country will be found incompatible with 
any other than free labor. Gradually our own Terri- 
tories, and the States, even where, as the Governor of 
Missouri expresses himself, "physical labor" has been 
longest depended upon, will throw off the incubus and 
welcome the blessings scattered by liberty along her 
path. 

My limits allow me no more extended and elaborate 
discussion. There is one topic, however, which I must 
touch before I close. 

Our fathers, as has been before intimated, entertained 
the idea, — sometimes the vision brightened into clear- 
ness of delineation, sometimes it was dimmed with 
shadows, but its outlines never vanished wholly from 
their minds, — that a vast empire, to be limited only by 
the great oceans, was to rise from the foundations they 
laid. In a prophetic dream, which a poet of our own 
day imagines to have visited one of the Pilgrim Fathers, 
he justly represents the voice of their posterity as ex- 
claiming — "The continent is ours." ^ Besides particu- 
lar sentiments incidentally expressed, to be found in 
their writings to this effect: the thought lay deep be- 
neath their institutions and whole public policy. It was 
expressed in their charters. It supplied a perpetual 
stimulus to their resolution, and made that resolution 
absolutely unconquerable, to expel the French from the 
western wilderness behind them, and is seen to have ex- 
alted the patriotic enthusiasm of such men as John 
Adams and Josiah Quincy, jr., in the opening struggles 
of the revolutionary controversy, suggesting to their 
ardent minds the most lofty views of the future for- 
tunes of the country, which they had resolved to bear on 
their arms, at every peril, into the family of independent 
nations. 

* Oliver Wendell Holmes. 



462 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

The Constitution of the United States of America, 
that greatest production of associated human wisdom, 
the most beneficent plan ever contrived for the govern- 
ment of men, in bodies poHtic, affords, if we will but be 
true to it, the means by which gradually, — and far bet- 
ter would it be if it were left peaceably to be done, — the 
whole continent may be included within the protection 
and shelter of one empire of liberty and order. The 
organization of state governments, within certain con- 
venient limits, for all local purposes of legislation and 
administration, and the union of them into one pervad- 
ing government for purposes in which there is a general 
interest, is a plan which I most assuredly believe, will 
be found to work more favorably the wider the regions 
over which it is extended. As the system expands, ter- 
ritorial distance, and the want of prompt inter-commu- 
nication between remote members of the confederacy, 
the only real difficulties that threatened to be insur- 
mountable, are already greatly reduced and almost ab- 
solutely obliterated by recent achievements in science. 

The American States have now continued in substan- 
tial union for seventy years. They went into the Revo- 
lutionary War, when occupying a narrow strip of the 
continent, along the Atlantic shore; they now stretch 
their legislative and executive organization to the Pa- 
cific. When their numbers were few, and the limits of 
the country itself were contracted, a disaffected section 
might entertain the project of withdrawing from the 
Union, but now its insignificance, if separated, is so pal- 
pable as to forbid the idea. For half a century, the 
question was discussed in newspapers, in periodicals, at 
college exhibitions, and in all private circles, whether 
extension of territory would not weaken the bonds of 
Union. It is high time to drop it forever. There is 
not a state, a county, a city, a town, a village, in the 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 463 

nation, in which, if the popular sentiment were tested, 
allegiance to the Union would not be found prevalent 
and ineradicable. 

The only source, from which alienation to the Union 
is to be apprehended, is on the part of those persons who 
feel themselves implicated in objectionable institutions 
maintained and cherished in some of the States. A cer- 
tain description of ignorant and insolent foreigners, not 
understanding our beautiful Federal system, are doing 
what they can to inflame this feeling. On this point, I 
wish, before I close, to draw a lesson of warning from 
an error of our fathers. They were deluded by this 
same idea. A confederation was a favorite object with 
them from the beginning. It was suggested naturally 
in the train of associations attached to their vision of a 
boundless empire of freedom and virtue. But they were 
prevented from developing it with efficacy by the ap- 
prehension that its members would be implicated in the 
peculiarities of each other. For this reason Rhode Is- 
land was excluded ; and until the period of the Revolu- 
tion the plan of a confederation was never made agree- 
able to all the colonies. If it had been otherwise — if 
leaving to each the care of its local concerns, from the 
beginning, the several colonies had sustained a confed- 
erated council, for the consideration and promotion of 
the general good, no human intelligence can calculate 
the effects upon the course of events. Perhaps, essential 
independence would have been secured, without blood- 
shed or any of the disastrous economical and moral 
effects of a long war. 

But, however that might have been, we are living in 
the enjoyment of the benefits of a confederacy that pre- 
serves us from intestine war, and confers upon us un- 
told blessings. Instead of wishing to go out from it 
because it includes conditions and institutions which we 



464 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

do not fancy, let us rejoice that it opens wide its arms 
to gather into its peaceful fold, and under its remedial 
influences, all who seek admission. Instead of feeling 
scandalized because some States, in the exercise of their 
reserved sovereignty, enact barbarous laws, and cherish 
unrighteous institutions, if we appreciated all the salu- 
tary effects flowing from the Union, and kept clearly 
in our minds the principle on which it was founded, we 
should only regret that we cannot, at once, extend it 
over all, even the most ill-governed and benighted races 
of the earth. Without entering upon an enumeration 
of the beneficial influences of such a confederation upon 
all whom it includes, it answers my present purpose to 
observe that, in removing standing armies, fortified and 
garrisoned towns, the iniquities that mark the borders 
of contiguous and unfriendly nations, and all the curses 
that follow in the train of rival and warring states, we 
have multiplied incalculably the chances, and cleared 
away the chief obstructions to the progress of reform. 
Indeed the abolition of standing armies is the first step 
in the elevation of a people, and it must be taken before 
any real progress can be made. The permanent mili- 
tary organization of a large proportion of the popula- 
tion, separated from the ordinary avocations of life, is 
the last resort, and the strong defence, of modern des- 
potism. It is the contrivance, by which kings turn the 
physical power of the people against the people them- 
selves. 

The relief from a standing army, we are enjoying in 
this country, is itself a blessing greater than was ever 
vouchsafed to a people before. To appreciate it fully 
one must travel in other countries. The military forces 
thought necessary to protect the frontiers of the Union, 
and preserve during peace, the basis, upon which, in the 
event of a foreign war, the strength of the nation might 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM 465 

be organized for belligerent purposes, are at this mo- 
ment nearly all withdrawn from the country; but the 
frame of society throughout this great empire is found 
able to stand without their aid. In all the Northern 
States, and, indeed, over nearly the entire surface of 
the Republic, there are not at the present time, more 
troops, of the regular army, all told, than are perma- 
nently stationed in every third rate city of Europe. If 
there are persons among us, so outraged by the existence 
of an institution that holds in bondage a portion of the 
colored race in some quarters of the confederacy, as to 
countenance the idea of a separation of the States, let 
them consider that while such a result would not in all 
probability reduce the evil, upon which their thoughts 
have become so painfully concentrated, it would in- 
evitably and instantly lead to the additional enslave- 
ment of thousands and tens of thousands of the white 
population, in the form of permanent standing armies, 
bristling along the borders of the multiplying fragments 
of the Union, and preying upon the resources, the mor- 
als and the liberties of all the rest. 

My last exhortation to the sons of New England, 
then, is to be faithful for ever to the Federal 
Union. While they exercise, according to their sev- 
eral convictions, their political rights in opposing all 
partial and sectional legislation, resisting the extension, 
by the national authority, of anti-republican institutions, 
and discountenancing unrighteousness and injustice 
in the mode in which the government is adminis- 
tered, let them rejoice in the assurance that, over what- 
ever extent of territory and from whatever motives of 
policy, the confederacy is spread, within its boundaries 
the arts of Peace, which are their arts, and were the 
arts of their fathers, will have an opportunity, such as 
has never been secured before, to prevail over all other 



466 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY ORATIONS 

arts. If, impelled by the enterprise which marks their 
race, they follow with their traffic and ingenious indus- 
try the conquests of our armies, or open the way for 
cultivation and civilization to advance into the remotest 
regions of the west, or pursue their avocations in any 
quarter of the Union, however inconsistent with their 
views its peculiar institutions may be, if they carry 
their household gods with them, all others will gradu- 
ally be converted to their principles, and imbued with 
their spirit. If the sons of New England rear the 
school-house and the church wherever they select their 
homes ; if they preserve the reliance upon their own in- 
dividual energies, the love of knowledge, the trust in 
Providence, the spirit of patriotic faith and hope, which 
made its most barren regions blossom and become fruit- 
ful around their fathers, then will the glorious vision of 
those fathers be realized, and the Continent rejoice, in 
all its latitudes and from sea to sea, in the blessings 
of freedom and education, of peace and prosperity, of 
virtue and religion. 



pec 18 1901 



